On Thu, 8 Dec 2016 08:15:47 Christopher Smith <christopher.sm...@videotron.ca> wrote: > I just conducted a piece for concert band by Samuel R. Hazo called > ?Arabesque? where there is a single measure of 6/4 indicated to be conducted > 2+2+2 in a context of 4/4. I think this was the right decision, as 4/4 + 2/4 > would have implied a stronger accent on the 2/4 bar than was on the 3 of the > 4/4 bar. It was a complex measure, too, and having me give a big downbeat in > the middle of that complex figure would have sent a message that wasn?t > implied in the music. I wouldn?t have liked three bars of 2/4 either, in a > context of 4/4, as that would have been really weird. I agree with both the impications, but I still think the original decision is a bit odd for an isolated 6/4; it might make sense as one in the middle of several normal ones. > I think that old convention of 6 being always compound time is relaxed now. > Other conventions that lived out their usefulness have been retired, too, so > I?m pretty okay with that. I never thought of that as a convention; it's a definition. If you mean that it implies only two beats in the bar, that was contradicted at least as early as movement 2 of Brahms 4.
Most of these problems arise from the inherent defects of number-only time signatures, but the Orff design has problems too; it shows you how many beats you need - 2/dotted-h-sign or 6/q-sign - but the second one fails to indicate whether there are two or three main accents. If you want to keep the denominator the same in the original problem, you could use 2/2 and 3/2 and conduct split halves Most of the beginners whom I teach assume that every beat is a quarter whatever the time signature, and experienced musicians will cope with any moderately clear beat. _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu https://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale To unsubscribe from finale send a message to: finale-unsubscr...@shsu.edu
