Andrew Stiller wrote:
Time for a reality check. There are other ways to notate such complex rhythmic proportions, some of them much more intuitive to play. Check out Ben Johnston's /Knocking Piece/, wh. was published in /Source/ #2 (1967) and recorded at least once. There are no meter signatures. A bold = sign thru the barline in each individual staff indicates that the preceding note value is maintained across the barline, so that for example when a bar of 5:4 eighths (5 eighths in the space of 4) is followed by a bar of four eighth notes with an = sign between the two bars, then the four eighth notes are to be played as if they were 4/5 of a quintuplet. Since the other player has something completely different and equally complex in the same bar, the presence of a meter signature would simply create confusion and visual clutter.
If I'm understanding your description right, it wouldn't work with Ferneyhough's rhythms. Again quoting from the score that's become my standard refernce for this discussion ;) there's all sorts of situations where it's not possible to equate the last note of one bar with the first note of the next....for example, a 3/20 bar containing a 7:6 tuplet, followed by a 16th-note in 5/8.
And, even if the equals-sign system were to be possible, it would obscure what is important in Ferneyhough's metres, in that the pulse is shifting up and down in exact ratios, not that a new pulse emerges from subdivisions of the previous one.
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