On 27 Apr 2005 at 17:33, John Howell wrote: > 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.
Why are you limiting your discussion to printed music? Manuscript music of the 17th and 18th centuries continues to use the practice you seem to be arguing was created as a result of using movable type. I'm not sure about Italian MS of the 15th and 16th century, but I do know that I remember dealing with quite a bit of Italian MS in my notation class where the beaming corresponded to the syllables (with single flags for syllabic sections). So, I don't really think there's a causal relationship. The new notation (which was created for a new kind of rhythm) seems to me to have arisen before movable type music printing, and it used what is today seen as the old-fashioned practice. That practice was uniform throughout MS and printed music well into the 20th century, it seems to me. They didn't seem to have a problem with it, though I find it quite difficult (my baroque group is doing a lot of playing from Charpentier original MSS, and it's all beamed the traditional way, with beams broken for the syllables; and it's a bitch to sightread). I'm not sure what caused the transition to a state where most musicians now find the new practice easier to read. -- 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
