On 1 Jul 2005 at 12:28, Andrew Stiller wrote: > On Jun 30, 2005, at 9:55 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: > > > I'm puzzled by why one would want to "rationalize" 6/8 to 6/12, > > While I agree that 6/12 is a bad solution, that does not mean there is > no problem. Composers for at least a century have found the > traditional notation of compound meters to be an unsatisfying kludge, > and have searched for a better way. . . .
I understand that and wholly agree that it's problematic. The whole 6/4 issues is a perfect example where a single pair of numbers is being used to represent very different things, and the ambiguity is the problem. > . . . Orff, for example, used actual > note shapes for the "denominator." In my own music, I put dots after > the numbers to signify that the meter is compound. I think using the note as denominator is the musically sensible way to do it. I wish Finale supported it. > The problem arises from the fact that 6/8 (for example) can mean > either 6 8th-note beats or two dotted-quarter beats (and please don't > say it can't do the former; we went through all this last year). Yes, I know it can represent that. > Nothing in the notation can tell you which, and one's choice will have > a drastic effect on tempo (6 allegro 8th-notes, or 2 allegro > dotted-Q?). Some passages are simply insoluble, such as the lone 6/8 > bar immediately before rehearsal G in the first mvt. of Hindemith's > _Symphonische Metamorphosen_. The prevailing meter is 2/4; is the beat > to be held constant through the 6/8 measure (compound meter), or the > note values (simple meter)? Both solutions are represented in > recordings. Unless a composer wants to tack down the meaning with what > can be a profusion of E = E indications, there is always a risk of the > intended musical meaning being misinterpreted, because the traditional > notation is inherently unclear. I concur that the traditional notation is the source of the problem. I don't agree that it's problematic to indicate something like E = E when there's a change of time signature whose interpretation is ambiguous. The hard part is when it's something like Q = H, where it may be that the old quarter equals the new half, or the old half equals the new quarter. I do this with <-Q = H-> in scores where it's necessary. I use that in this piece (well, actually <-H = Q->): http://www.dfenton.com/Rose/ to clarify relationships between different meters (in this case a change from 3/2, with frequent 6/4 passages). (pardon the unfinished score layout, as well as the only partially realized MIDI performance) I hadn't realized until just listening through that piece again how salient it is to the 3/2 vs. 6/4 discussion. I put into practice my assertions about how it should work throughout this piece. The very beginning is similar to the typical 3/2 vs. 6/4 mixture type (though it has syncopation built in that is somewhat atypical). Just deciding on the meter of that passage was something of a challenge (the pickup is in 3, the 1st full measure in 2, for instance). And then I follow that with a 6/4 section that does not retain the same half-note pulse (either by keeping the same quarter, or by equating the previous half with the new dotted half) -- instead the new quarter is equal to the old half, making each 6/4 measure the same length as two of the previous 3/4 measures. The reason for this seeminly inconsistent choice of meters is actually because from variation to variation, I'm jumping around between various historical style periods. The opening theme is in the style of the period it was written by Praetorius, while the first variation I think of as Handelian. Thus, my use of time signatures shifts from a 16th-century practice to an 18th-century practice. That's followed by another 18th-century variation (12/8), followed by a 16th- or 17th-century variation that is mostly in 2/2, but has several 3/2 and 6/4 passages (and those meters don't really always fit, because not all the parts are sharing the same metrical shifts). That's then followed by a 19th-century 4/4, followed by an 18th- century Allegretto 4/4, and closing with a 16th-/17th-century 3/2 that heavily exploits the rhythmic ambiguity of the 3/2 vs. 6/4 shift as well as what I refer to as authentic hemiola (with a 3/1 passage near the end, though it's actually substantially less straightforward than that sounds, with some truncation going on to intentionally throw off the listener's sense of time in order to emphasize the return to straight time for the penultimate cadence). Even the 12/8 section plays around with some quarter notes against the dotted quarter, so this seems, in this piece at least, to be something of a characteristic stylistic quirk of mine. -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
