On 30 Jun 2005 at 20:59, Owain Sutton wrote: > David W. Fenton wrote: > > > If you're talking about choosing a meter for a composition of your > > own, you'd make the choice depending on what the musicians you're > > composing for would expect. If I'm writing for viol consort, I'd > > choose 3/2, since viols are more accustomed to reading small > > subdivisions in meters with large beat values. If I were writing for > > string quartet, I'd choose 3/4. > > Why do you suggest that ordinary (i.e. non-'early music' specialist) > musicians would have any difficulty with a minim pulse? I can think > of at least one Schubert quartet with a fast finale in 2/2, and > there's plenty more minim beats in standard repertoire.
You're ignoring the context of what I responded to, which was the idea of 3/2 in ONE, i.e., a very fast tempo. Modern musicians, in my experience, carry the assumption that large note values for the beat are slower tempos, and also they are accustomed to the subdivisions having certain lengths (they don't think of quarter notes or 8th notes as fast notes). Now, if there were a switch from 2/2 to a passage in 3, and the tempo of both was fast enough that it was in one beat to the measure, I would probably use 3/2 after 2/2. But the context was not about a switch of meters, but about a piece in as fast 3. -- 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
