On Oct 25, 2004, at 5:48 PM, John Poole [Finale Discussion] wrote:
In defense of the tremolo:
<snip>
Two cents from a sight-reader.
I concur with John's points, and I would add my own observations.
My main experience with tremolo markings is in piano-vocal scores for opera. I've worked in the opera world as a coach and as a backup rehearsal accompanist. In either case I probably am somewhat familiar with the score from having heard it, but I've never practiced it and possibly have never played it before.
Unless it's really simple, I'm not even going to try to play all the notes. I'm just looking to provide the singers with a basic rhythm and harmony and whatever cues are necessary. Typically I'm devoting most of my attention to listening to the singers, and if I'm coaching I might be singing one or more of the other vocal lines.
The tremolo abbreviation is useful in such a case. I don't want to read a bunch of 16th notes I'm not going to play anyway. Regardless of what's written, I'm just going to get a quick sense of the harmony and then play whatever sort of accompaniment fill suits me for the context. Seeing the tremolo marking gives me some relevant information about the orchestration (ie, that it's either an actual tremolo in the strings or else some sort of sustained orchestral tone), but it doesn't distract me with a bunch of individual notes.
Even a good pianist generally is not going to play every note in an orchestra reduction for piano, unless it's a reduction specifically designed for concert performance. Among other things, piano reductions often include spreads of notes which are simply unreachable with two hands. With regard to tremolos, some of them are unplayably fast, if they are taken literally as measured tremolos.
Ultimately, it comes down to what you're used to seeing. This is a common convention in piano reductions of orchestra music. I'm used to it.
mdl
_______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
