At 9:06 PM -0400 5/31/10, David W. Fenton wrote:
In the repertory my viol consort plays, we are constantly fighting the syncopation problem, in that the music is actually polymetric, but never notated in any way but with barlines that line up in all the parts. I don't care how gifted a player is, if the notation looks like a syncopation, it's going to get played differently than if it doesn't. I have never come up with a solution in our repertory, as the result would be completely independent meters with a points of alignment throughout. I tried to do it once as an illustration, but it was complicated in Finale that I just totally gave up.
My approach (and frustrations) mirror David's exactly. And for both of us it comes from the fact that some of the music we play, and edit, did not use barlines in the first place, and was not conceived to use barlines. Nor did it use syncopations, since by definition sycopes require a regular beat. My editions of choral music are a compromise. I delete the barlines completely, except at arbitrary rehearsal letter points. But I do notate the choral parts in score and I do use bar numbers for rehearsal purposes. The major problem is that both Finale and Sibelius INSIST on relating everything to bars, so even if the barlines are not there, the programs think they are, and they will tie notes across non-existent barlines rather than allow simple note values. I eventually figured out a kludge in Composer's Mosaic that allowed me to get rid of those ties, but it doesn't seem to be possible in Sibelius.
So this is quite a different problem from Dennis's, in which he wants barlines but differently in each part.
Alan Atlas goes into detail about modern editions in "Renaissance Music," which I happen to use for an Early Music Literature course. But ticks, Mensurstrichen, or independent barlines are not the same as no bar lines, and don't really solve the problem if notes are still tied.
John -- John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music Virginia Tech Department of Music College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:john.how...@vt.edu) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html "We never play anything the same way once." Shelly Manne's definition of jazz musicians. _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
