====================Jan Nieuwenhuizen
> *please* do not support the
> odious practice of putting short slurs over beams.
i) We'd like to support everything: the user should be in command.
ii) Having said that, we don't plan to do thing wrong on purpose/by
default.
> The slur should be
> pushed toward
> the end of the stem as necessary, and the stem should lengthen
> enough to
> accomodate it if there are beams.
Huh? I think I don't understand. You want to have
A)
======
| __ |
|/ \|
x| x|
instead of this:
B) ___
/ \
======
| |
x| x|
* I haven't seen A), ever.
* Fine engraving, schott, baerenreiter etc use B)
* Note that B) will only be used if there's another voice on
the staff. Usually,
C)
=====
| |
x| x|
\__/
will be used
---------------------
I am really sorry to be so slow in getting this done. Permit me to skip
one of your points (multiple slurs) for now, because the others can more
conveniently be addressed together. Also, I cheerfully admit that the
issue of longer slurs is a lot tougher. ;-)
"Tres Canciones Populares Mexicanas", Manuel Ponce, Schott 1928. I. Here
you see a preference for slurs on top of beams in full bloom. In the 1st
2 measures, the producer has not bellied in because he was not forced to
do so by lack of room. It would be better if reversed, but then he
thinks he would have to snap. He can't snap because there would be no
indication which note was to originate slur. Thus, one bad idea leads to
another.
Measures 8, 16. Same problem, but in this case he is forced to forego
snapping and also bellies in. Does it look so bad to do it better?
Measure 10. Here the producer has made a mistake. The c# should be an
8th note. His bias for snapping did not serve well here. He has
preferred mere cosmetics for accuracy, and made a mistake. Shame on him.
Shame on Schott. Shame on the guy that *thoughtlessly* made the
cockamamie rule about snapping.
Measure 18. Should not the slur belly in? Can't snap.
Measure 19. He can do it, so he does it.
Measure 20. Can't snap. D on 3rd beat should be 8th note. Slur done
badly. Bellies out. This measure would look a lot better if the slur
bellied in, don't you think?
The mistake in this measure (still 20) is much more noticeable (which is
a good thing) because the producer *intended* to be completely
consistent in his practice with ties, which is great. The fact that the
tie is peculiar makes it easier to see that the stems are wrong. All of
the d#'s should be in the upper part. Then the ties would curve toward
the stems. Consistency is good. Inconsistency is bad. Consistency in
snapping slurs to beams is *impossible*, because you can't always get
away with it.
Majority and "expert" opinion to the contrary, If there is more than one
part on any single staff, all the ties *or slurs* in every part should
belly the same: toward their stem ends: inward, and nothing should snap.
There is no other option which can be consistently applied. That is not
my fault or yours. Leave the artwork to the artists. Do logic and reason
instead.
Does anyone know Herr Chlapik? Is he still alive? Show him a bent
bracket. Explain the problems with snapping. See what he thinks now,
instead of quoting what he thought then.
Measure 21. Can't snap. Slur looks better belly in doesn't it?
Measure 27. Goes back to snapping. Hasn't learned a thing. Missed a
rest. These guys were paid by the page. What can you expect?
Summary:
Slurs: 12 (not counting grace notes,
which are assumed to be slurred
regardless)
Snapped: 3
Slurs bellied out which should not be,
and would be snapped according
to your rule: 6
Slurs belly in happily: 3
How did the mistakes survive the approval process?
The way they always do. This was arranged by Ponce and probably written
in piano notation. Segovia made it into something playable on the
guitar. Ponce did not see it again. I know that to be true in this case
because the 3rd piece has a small part of the melody left out, which
must have been Segovia's mistake, from never having heard the tune,
("Valentina") and I believe Ponce would have called his attention to it.
Segovia's eyesight was very bad. He had many eye surgeries, 14 I
believe. He had a problem in writing, but obviously a much greater
problem with erasing. When a music publisher submits proofs to an author
the publisher will not tolerate much in the way of correction. They
consider that any mistake that appears in the version that the author
sent them to be the responsibility of the author, and not theirs. Look
at it from the publisher's viewpoint. (High time, huh?) There are
authors whose submissions are an awful mess, and publishers do not want
to be caught up in a cycle of endless very expensive revision. It was a
business necessity for them to insist that the submissions be legible
and unambiguous. Segovia was very happy in his dealings with Schott
because they treated him well in business ways, but he often complained
that he would correct copy and then find that the corrections were
ignored. I really doubt if they ever gave him a reason. Would you? I
wouldn't. :-)
((((((( topic alert! Curved lines, not ties or slurs!
================
* 'This was never really good', is that an expression of your taste,
------yes
====== or do you have references?
------yes, to my surprise
========* What is 'present practise'?
------ square bracket, worse than tuplet arc.
---------------------
I just found a tuplet arc, a curved tuplet bracket in Schott.
"Nocturno", Torroba, Schott 1926. 3rd page (p5) measures 1 and 10. This
style of tuplet bracket was an improvement over the square bracket *over
beams* because it could not be mistaken for another beam, but today is
unacceptable because it cannot easily be distinguished from a slur. In
these measures, you can't claim that any of these curved brackets were
supposed to be slurs, because real slurs are present (twice) or a slur
is impossible (once). So this increases to 7 Mr. Chubb's listed number
of types or uses of curved lines in music. But it is unacceptable, to me
anyway, so it didn't make my short list. Look at the 2nd page (p4), line
6, last tuplet. Is it slurred or not? It is impossible to tell. Look at
the line below that. Yuck! Aren't you glad you don't have to support the
unsupportable? But unfortunately you have found it necessary to support
the square bracket, which is worse than the curved bracket because beams
are more essential than slurs, but better than no bracket at all, which
was nothing but intolerable, careless, inexcusable laziness on the part
of engravers. This constitutes a total abject failure by the "best"
people in the music engraving craft, including those who lived to write
about it. They did a lot of things right, but none of that lot, European
or American, *ever* did tuplets decently. Did you know that even the
word "tuplet" comes from a computer person, not any other music
professional? Maybe they just needed to have a word for it? :-)
)))))))))
"Pieces Characteristiques" vol 2, Torroba, Schott 1931, in which, "Los
Mayos" 2nd page of it, (I'll stop giving the printed page number because
that could be different in a collection or anthology.) line 2 meas 3 and
4. That's what I like to see. Logic. Consistency. (Except the missing
rest!) Line 3, meas 4: A little sloppy, but great! Line 4 meas 3:
amnesia? Alzheimers'?.
"Albada" in same publication, summary:
slurs: 29
one part, belly out correct: 6
2 parts, belly out not ok: 4
belly in, one part, incorrect: 0
belly in, two parts: 19 :-)
snapped: 0
So at Schott, if you twisted arms hard enough, you could occasionally
find someone who would do the slurs right. :-)
Paganini's 26 Guitar Solos, Wilhelm Zimmerman 1926. 19 pages with music
on. Largely 2 parts. Lots of slurs. No snaps. Almost all belly out.
Number 22 "Minuetto" line 5 meas 1 has a belly-in with one part. Can't
snap. Difficult to do differently. At the end is a curved tuplet
bracket, or maybe a phrase mark being used as a tuplet bracket, spanning
two slurs, where it would be much better to put the big curve over the
beams, but not the two smaller ones. Number 22 line 5 meas 1: The first
four slurs are intended to be double, but the guitarist in the street
has absolutely no way of knowing that. It should have been marked or
annotated. Bad job. It is totally ambiguous. It would have been better
to lengthen the stems and move two bellied-in slur marks toward the
beams, as I suggested.
25 Etudes, Napoleon Coste, orig Paris ca 1830, Schott 1926. #2, L4, m4.
Here an attempt is made to draw a slide in the way I suggested, with a
straight line and a curved.
#4, L3, m7: two curved tuplet brackets. They are very common in this
book.
#6: This guy is so in love with snapping that he does it with only one
part on L6, and the stems are in the wrong direction. L8 m4 is really,
really bad. He has put the curved tuplet bracket at the heads and the
slurs at the beams, the exact opposite of what should be done.
#8, last line, m2: He seems to have partially regained his sanity. The
reminder key sig at the end of this line is one of the stupidest things
I have ever seen in printed music, since it is *past the end of the
piece*. Why have a key sig without a clef, ever? It looks like hell.
#11 really shows how bad snapping can get. It is an indescribable mess.
#19, 3rd line from end, m4. He does it in an intelligent way, and for my
life I can't understand why, but he did it my way.
#20, p2 of it, L4 m2,3,4, L5 m1,2,3. Somehow snapping temporarily lost
its charm when the problem appeared, (Which note originates?) and his
desire to be consistent overcame the bad idea of snapping slurs, so he
quit doing it altogether for a brief while. Also, he does some slides
decently on L6 m3.
#21 the curved tuplet brackets are mostly on the beams now.
#23 L4 m4. The first curved line is not a slur it is a tie. Nothing is
slurred. The meaning would be clearer if the rest were tied and if the
other 3 beamed 32nds originated ties also. This is undoubtedly another
arcane archaic usage specific to the guitar music of the early 19th
century. p1 of #23, last measure, a slide, distinctly inferior to p2 L1
m2,3,4 in the slides, but otherwise the latter is much too clever in
thinning the beams, respacing the leger lines, etc.
*Snapping to beams creates problems and solves none.
*If you can't do it consistently, don't do it.
*If Schott couldn't do it consistently, neither can you.
*Therefore, snapping to beams by default is a bad idea. Q.E.D.
None of this applies to phrase marks, only slurs. Darius Milhaud wrote a
piece dedicated to Segovia completely covered with curved lines. To a
pianist, this might look very nice, but I found that I didn't want to
even look at it, because I know that I will never have any idea what
those lines mean, since I strongly suspect that they don't mean a damn
thing. I, and many millions of other people, live in a world where slurs
are slurs and phrase marks are phrase marks, and we get uncomfortable
when we can't see which is which, because we expect them to mean
something specific, that we should do something about. The people who
write phrase marks for quitarists usually don't mean anything specific
enough for us to consider that they know what they are doing.
Consequently, phrase marks in guitar music are rare.
--
Peace, understanding, health and happiness to all beings!
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