Before I go any further in correcting the rest of the song, could y'all tell me if this is correct now? The only other thing I wasn't sure about is the beaming - when to and when not to in vocals... Seems like there's some rule about not beaming if there are different syllables...?
Looks good to me, and the notation actually suggests the feel of the song, which is important.
The other thing you're asking about is an historical thing. I'll give you the short version (and believe it or not, this really IS the short version!).
In Gregorian chant notation, notes that were intended to be sung to a single syllable were bound together in a "ligature" (think "clump of notes mashed together"!). It's easy to read once you learn how, and is a perfect system for that music. (Very melismatic music, like an "alleluia," had to use lots of ligatures for each syllable, but the principle was the same.)
The first printed polyphonic music shows up in the early 16th century, 1501 in Venice, to be exact. This was music printed from movable type, which means that each piece of type had a single note shape or a single rest shape on it. So beaming was physically impossible and it never occurred to them. All notes, including 8th notes and smaller, were separate, and this was for both vocal and instrumental music. Slurs were also impossible, so there was literally no way to specify how many notes were to be sung on a single syllable. They tried to indicate it by placement of the text under the notes, but the printers were not musicians and you really can't trust them for that kind of detail.
The actual engraving of music--technical use of the term here, meaning the use of a sharp steel engraving tool to "write" the music, backwards, on a soft copper plate--dates from the 17th century, and since the engraver was literally drawing the music as if drawing a picture, both beaming and slurs now became possible. Trouble was, most engravers weren't used to seeing music that way, and tended to use individual 8th notes rather than beamed 8ths, but they did start using slurs to indicate melismas.
19th century music printers tended to continue using individual 8th notes for vocal music, even as they were applying beaming to instrumental music. Again, it's just what people were used to seeing.
During the 20th century, most music publishers (but not all, by any means) started switching over from individual notes to beamed notes in vocal music, and by the late 20th century it was unusual to see vocal music with individual notes except from the oldest, most conservative publishers.
Now the "rule" about not beaming if there are different syllables is not so much a rule as a practice that came to be used in one very specific situation. The situation was transcribing chant music from chant notation into modern notation, which musicologists in the first 2/3 of the 20th century believed was necessary because nobody they knew could read chant notation. (Which was kind of silly, since I can teach any singer to read chant notation in about 10 minutes flat!) They tried various notational practices. One was to use individual noteheads without stems, and then to indicate the original ligatures using square brackets over the noteheads. Another was to do the same thing, but indicate the original ligatures using slurs, the method I favor. And another was to use all 8th notes, beaming the notes of the original ligatures together and leaving the others as individual 8th notes. I don't care for this practice, myself, because we are used to seeing slurs and not to using beams in place of slurs.
My advice for ANY modern notesetter is to beam notes in vocal music exactly as you would in instrumental music. It's easier to read, period. (And my advice for those singing chant is to learn to read chant notation; it's better designed for the job than ANY modern workaround!)
John
-- John & Susie Howell Virginia Tech Department of Music Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
