On 08.01.2017 19:15, Flaming Hakama by Elaine wrote:

    So if the composer wrote a tempo indication, use \tempo; if the
    composer didn’t write anything and it’s just a tempo modification,
    use the latter.


This strikes me as odd: when would you change tempo unless it was indicated by the composer?

It’s a quite modern idea that you’d have to keep one tempo throughout the piece (came up after WW I, as is shown by early recordings). In earlier music, there are often situations where it’s obvious that the tempo has to change although nothing has been indicated by the composer, or at least it enhances the music and expression to not have a rigid approach here. I understand there’s a quotation by Beethoven which essentially says „the tempo indication is for the first bar“. And one of the meanings of ‘adagio’ is ‘free in tempo’.

I guess my question would be: does anyone else use \tempo for things like rit., accel. and a tempo?

Yes, I do, because it’s semantically the most appropriate. In fact, I have even gone to the length of creating the attached library file, which not only creates a semantical music function, but also easily enforces consistent layout for all these agogic marks.

Best, Simon
\version "2.19.20"

#(define-markup-command
  (agogical layout props text)
  (markup?)
  (interpret-markup layout props
    (markup #:italic text)))
agogicMark =
#(define-music-function (parser location text) (markup?)
   #{ \tempo \markup \agogical $text #})

rit = \agogicMark "rit."
pocoRit = \agogicMark "poco rit."
accel = \agogicMark "accel."
accelMolto = \agogicMark "accel. molto"
aTempo = \agogicMark "a tempo."
_______________________________________________
lilypond-user mailing list
lilypond-user@gnu.org
https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user

Reply via email to