On 13 Feb 2006 at 8:14, Cecil Rigby wrote: > In a case not long ago, with a composer we eventually decided to > publish, this issue came up. In order to avoid all confusion we simply > decided to show the beat unit's metronome markings at the beginning of > each of the two affected sections. I'm still not sure the composer was > convinced the more recommended method was OK to use, despite lots of > evidence provided to support it. This person was schooled in the > traditional method and just wasn't comfortable with the change. The > compromise is clear, of course, so everyone's happy now.
Well, count me out on metronome markings. First off, I'm not a fan of metronomes -- I don't even own one. The reason is that I believe as a practice tool they are not useful, since they encourage non-musical performance. The only purpose they have is as a reference for identifying the general tempo, but I believe that's only really necessary when the music is so obscure (or badly written) as to make it impossible to figure out the appropriate tempo range just from the musical text and the tempo/mood markings. Second, metronome markings tend to overspecify tempos. If you provide a single one, does that mean "approximately" or "exactly"? If the former, how much varation is appropriate? For most music, it seems to me that it's better to provide a range of appropriate metronome settings. But in that case, what do you do to show proportions? If you have Q=80-96 do you then do H=80-96? If you do, then the interpreter has to remember that this was the tempo range of the previous section and that this indicates an equivalence between the two subdivisions. But it's ambiguous as to whether what is intended is an exact proportion of a tempo defined loosly, or a loose proportion of a tempo range. If you have a metronome mark at the beginning of a piece and a proportion for meter changes, you can clearly specify what you mean. If you want no actual proportion, then you use a metronome marking. If you want a proportion, then you define it by showing which note values are equivalent in the two meters. It seems to me that <-q=h-> is completely unambiguous and easy to understand. Just putting in a metronome marking that is twice the speed of the previous metronome marking is not going to provide nearly as much information. Now you if you did <-q=h-> (h=80-96) that would be completely unambiguous. And isn't that what we want? Don't we want the interpreters of the music we're engraving to be able to perform it without scratching their heads or without having to jump back to the beginning to understand what a metronome marking means in context? Or without having to stop and check the metronome before going to the next section? -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
