On Nov 5, 2005, at 6:55 AM, Johannes Gebauer wrote:
The following 8th notes (treble clef)
b" (on 1st top ledger line), g, e, g, (all same octave), beamed
together (beam below).
Should this beam be horizontal, or slanted (down, obviously)?
I can't really find a similar case in Ross.
In Clinton Roemer, the Art of Hand Copying, his chapter on beams is
quite extensive and he deals with this.
According to him, you slant a beam only if no note is lower than the
last nor higher than the first, even if the contour is changing within
the group, but not if there are recurring pitches (like an Alberti,
which he would write flat). Since this is NOT your case, he would
insist on a flat beam.
2nd Edition, pg 65, second last line third example, he has your exact
example (a step up and in retrograde, but there it is!) with a flat
beam.
Kurt Stone (1st edition, pg 11) has less detail, but is more flexible
on the subject. He says that beams on note groups with an irregular
contour can be flat OR slanted. He has an example slanted that Roemer
would have definitely written flat.
I have a copy of Norton Manual of Music Manuscript, George Heusenstamm,
lying around in the piles somewhere so I can't cite a page, but I
remember that he definitely accepts more slanting than anyone else. He
slants according to the starting and ending notes, and so would
definitely slant your example.
You didn't ask MY opinion, but I would tend to default to flat beams
for your example, more along the lines of Roemer.
Christopher
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