Dear List Mavens:
We're in the middle of a week long string orchestra workshop, a few
excellent players, others not so good, but will grow a lot from the
experience. You wouldn't think that music at the level we're playing
would toss up notation questions, but surprisingly enough it does.
This is the first in a series.
Scene: Corelli Concerto Grosso, Op. 6, No. 1, Luck's Music Library
edition, editor not named. Transition from a longish Largo to an
Allegro in 4/2 meter, marked cut time. (Corelli was not yet
completely modern in his use of tempo/mood indications and time
signatures.)
The editor has used breve rests rather than whole note rests to
indicate a single bar rest. (The breve rest is a thick stroke that
fills the entire space between two adjacent staff lines) So far, so
good. The intention is so clear that I hardly noticed the breve
rests we have at the beginning of the section. Until, that is, we
came to our one and only multi-measure rest in that movement. It was
at the very limit of my aging eyesight, and for the life of me I
couldn't tell what that blob on the page was. In fact, even when I
pulled the music closer at our next break I couldn't immediately
figure it out. What it turned out to be was a measure with 4 breve
rests stacked 2 + 2, with a numeral 4 over them. It was simply a
4-measure rest, but the registration on the breve strokes was not
very good and it was difficult to figure out. Sightread? Forget it!!
The question? Well, I've done my musicological studies, and I can
read the rests in 13th century Franconian notation as well as these
stacked rests just fine, but it's intellectual and NOT immediate and
instinctive. So, why would anyone use these archaic stacks in a
modern edition rather than a straightforward multimeasure rest that
anyone can understand?
Is a puzzlement!!
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
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