On 22 Jun 2004 at 4:15, Noel Stoutenburg wrote: > On the traditional practice of beaming of vocal music to syllablesm, > Dr. Howell wrote: > > > Actually it originates from the early 16th century printing of music > > from individual pieces of metal type, each of which had a section of > > the 5-line staff and a single note or rest. (This single-impression > > method was worked out by Pierre Attaignant and probably other > > Parisian printers, and was more efficient than the triple- and > > double-impression methods used earlier by Ottaviano Petrucci.) > > There was no way to beam notes together until the practice of > > engraving on copper plates came into use in, I believe, the 17th > > century. > > To which Mark responded > > > Thanks for the information. Even so, there must be an explanation > > why beaming practice for instrumental music evolved while beaming > > practice for vocal music did not. > > I would submit the following explanation. > > Prior to about 1850, or so, choral music was engraved, the same way > instrumental music was. I have acquired copies of printed Organ and > Piano works dated to about 1812, and of the music for the Funeral of > Lord Nelson, dated about ten years earlier; there is no difference > between the engraving of the two; choral music was beamed just the > same as instrumental music, though I would note that the choral music > generally used double the time values as is customary today, so that > most of the music is in 4/2 and 3/2 meters, rather than 4/4 and 3/4; > this eliminates the need for many beams.
Hmm. Seems to me that in that period, meters with half note as denominator were surely consciously in the old, learned style. Mozart's Requiem has a mix of old, learned style pieces and modern pieces, but that uniformly uses "modern" meters. Church music is the exception to modern metric conventions, of course, as it was highly traditional, but I see no evidence in my research that non-learned style pieces (i.e., written in the current musical style) were notated in anything but the conventional, modern time signatures. > After 1850, until between 1930 and 1950, most all choral music was > typeset, where the notes and staves were assembled from noteheads, and > vertical and horizontal lines. To see how this was, find an old > hymnal, or songbook, and look at the music with a handlens, looking > especially for small gaps in the staff lines. Clefs were generally > one piece of type, but the area occupied by a quarter note was > assenbled from as many as a dozen small pieces of type: one or more > noteheads, several staff lines, and the stem line. "Choral beaming" > was adopted by the typesetters as a means of saving time and > materials, as instead of multiple flags, the typesetter could use a > single beam, which could be also used elsewhere, for example, by > turning it 90 degrees, using it as a heavy bar line. I don't know exactly what printing techniques you are talking about here, but from about 1750 to 1820, the most prestigious technique for music printing was engraving on copper (or, later, steel) plates. Starting around 1800, with the invention of lithography, alternate (and cheaper) printing methods came to be used. Eventually, lithography and other methods based on photography became the norm for all printing (though important works were still engraved on plates in the late 19th century). > The latest example of typeset music I have seen dates to about 1950; > the use of photographic methods of preparing music made music > typesetting obsolete. To my knowledge today, there are exactly two > fonts of music types in existence in the world today; a printer in > England has a set of "square notation" type, and a printer in the U.S. > has a set of round notation type, which I understand is being donated > to the Smithsonian Institution. If I'm reading correctly, your implication is that music printing from type was the reason for the use of broken beams in vocal music during the period you're describing. Yet, Mozart's own autographs, which were written *by hand*, show the traditional beams broken to correspond to the syllabification of the text. There are *no exceptions* to this practice. So, while printing from type may have been the original source of this practice in the 16th and 17th centuries, clearly by Mozart's time, the practice had a life of its own that transcended music printed from type. -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
