At 11:51 AM -0600 7/6/05, John Abram wrote:
A twelfth note is a triplet eighth note. They are sometimes used in
new music (eg Mark-Anthony Turnage has used it frequently I believe)
Henry Cowell was way ahead of the game with this sort of thinking.
Why is 12/12 not like 12/8? Because 12/8 is not triplets.
Yes, I know it sounds like triplets, but it's not.
Why is there so much confusion over compound time?
Well, perhaps I'm too dense to follow your reasoning, but your two
statements above do seem to be mutually contradictory!
If it quacks like a duck, it's a duck. If it sounds like triplets,
it's triplets. Q.E.D! Its barcarole is worse than its bite!
Seems to me that talking about "beats" compounds (sorry!) the
confusion. Yes, 12/8 can indicate 4 "beats" per bar; that's sort of
the default interpretation. At a slower tempo, however, it can
indicate 12 "beats" per bar. I've conducted Bach slow movements that
required exactly that. And at a faster tempo it can indicate 2
"beats" per bar. Young musicians have to learn that ALL time
signatures are variable. They may first encounter 6/8 in the context
of marches, 2 beats to a bar. And they will be confused the first
time they run into 6/8 with six beats to a bar, but that's just one
more variable in our notation that they have to master. (And even
college-age students are often flumoxed by ties over the barline to
the first note of the next bar, especially in compound time; I can't
figure out why, but it happens.)
I was taught by my mother (a heck of a good theory teacher) to read
time signatures as "four quarter," "three quarter," or "six eighth"
time. The lower number has indicated a note value since the
beginning of the common practice period, and there is, in fact, no
12th note in the system. Sorry. Feel free to invent your own
notation; just don't expect us old fogey traditionalists to read it.
As to the Creston, I don't know the work so I can't comment.
But what do I know?!!
John
--
John & Susie Howell
Virginia Tech Department of Music
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
_______________________________________________
Finale mailing list
Finale@shsu.edu
http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
