I think everybody agrees that rehearsal numbers or letters every ten
bars is a bad idea.
Stravinsky used them in late scores. IM(very)HO it was his way of
seeming as detached and unemotional as possible about his music and
telling the performers "you figure it out." But he was Stravinsky.
Contrast this to Bartok, who bracketed sections of works with timings in
some scores to facilitate analysis (oh no, Ray opens a big can o'Fibonacci).
Also I think publishers may have been responsible for adding some of the
10-bar rehearsal letters to works when composers had provided none. A
cop-out, in other words.
I saw something recently that was even worse. Last Christmas we played
somebody's "Hannukah Festival Overture" (or something like that) about
10 times. It had the rehearsal letters and multiple bar rests broken up
every EIGHT bars, from beginning to end - but they didn't correspond to
the phrases! A few were correct at the start, but some would be one bar
off for several phrases in a row. I remember a bunch in the middle of
the piece were off by three. It was extremely aggravating to play a
simple piece like this, so many times, that was so confusing.
RBH
Louisville Orchestra
Richard Smith wrote:
... I agree completely with the comments about numbering every 5 or 10
bars. Those numbers are never where they should be and often create
more confusion than clarity. I think that was an idea from the middle
of the last century that (thankfully) is not used much today.
_______________________________________________
Finale mailing list
Finale@shsu.edu
http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
