David W. Fenton wrote:
> I would much prefer something like:
david, coming from you, this kind of comment is like someone who doesn't (want to) swim and hates being in water stating his preference for fresh water lakes over saltwater seas.
i would suggest that 3+2+3+2+2/12 is no different than your example, as did owain, but there is conceptual blockage here, so i won't bother.
metric structures which were standardized in the tonal era do not necessarily have relevance in a large quantity of music in the past hundred years. simple and banal (and easily accessible) example, ligeti's ramifications. beaming patterns, melodic contours, rhythmic gestures can be used to infer the structure of the music in cases where the time signatures are used only as a necessary evil to coordinate the performers, that is, in cases where there is no inherent recurrent metric pattern. time signatures are for some composers an afterthought, and applied as a helpful tool to assist the performer understand the phrasing structures, among other reasons. /12 and the like signal (in general a return to) a heightened concern for metric structures, although not with codified stress patterns as in the tonal era, but as delimitations of musical content. one (attentive) look at ferneyhough, and the relationship between the music and meter is immediately clear. for eg. time and motion study II, although i'm not sure offhand if this was written before he began to use /12 meters, but in any case this requires actually looking at the score and WANTING to see the reasons such time signatures are used _by the composers who use them_. also see carceri d'invenzione I, where the chamber orchestra is divided into varying groups, and where the music of each group maintains a clear relationship with the meter shared by the entire orchestra.
using /12 time sigs also lightens the music, and the performers who wish to perform new music inevitably find the music easier to read, since the notational details - here one layer of tuplets - have been reduced. it's not just an illusion, the tuplet has effectively been integrated into the time signature, and since any professional musician should be able to feel shifts between 3-let 8ths, 5-let 8ths and straight 8ths, there is no reason for the aggravated and indignant panic such time sigs typically cause amongst musicians WHO DON'T PLAY NEW MUSIC ANYWAYS! this lightening of the notational detail also shows the composers' concern with ameliorating the performers' encounter with the music, contrary to accusations of such notational "excesses" being hermetic and academic.
-- shirling & neueweise \................/ new music notation specialists mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] :.../ http://newmusicnotation.com _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
