On 13 Feb 2006 at 16:11, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote: > At 03:04 PM 2/13/06 -0500, David W. Fenton wrote: > >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. > > The markings are quite specific in many contemporary scores -- not to > be 'metronomic' but simply to be precise about where the tempo is to > fall both absolutely and in relation to other places.
I understand that. I consider it a case of a composer not really understanding music to require a very specific tempo marking. If you really require that in your music, you should be composing for synthesizers, not for human beings. But we've had this discussion before, Dennis, so I won't belabor the point -- we simply disagree on it. > >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. > > That would apply to "most music" because the specificity of markings > was only extraordinarily important in the era 1945-1975 (generalizing > there) and continues to be critical among the New Complexity > composers. But exact tempos still remain crucial in electroacoustic > pieces with fixed accompaniment, or in any piece where the > relationships between rhythms have to be expressed with great clarity. > (Karkoschka identifies 21 contemporary methods of marking tempo > outside the traditional types.) Well, I wasn't considering electronic music in my comments, so I'll agree that there is a reasonable exception there to my specificity objection. Film scores would have the same requirements. > >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. > > By indicating approximation to start with, you've set up a puzzle > based on your own suggestion. If you assume it to be specific rather > than a range, then even if the performer varies it, the resulting > relationship is correct and the tempo is also likely to be closer to > reality. Also, the word "ca." comes to mind, a very handy way of > letting the tempo flex a bit. I'm not certain I understand. If your original tempo is ca. q=80 and your new tempo is ca. h=80, then would q=84 in the first section and h=78 be Ok for the new meter? Or do you mean that once you've chosen q=84, the half has to remain 84? How do you indicate flexible initial tempo but strict proportion? > But keep in mind that if a performer is lax with the tempo marking, > that same performer might be lax with the rhythmic relationship in the > 'x=y' equation. Well, humans are not computers and there will always be a certain amount of variation. But one hopes that it's within a certain reasonable range as conceived (and, where possible, indicated) by the composer/arranger. My point is that proportions can handle all the permutations very clearly, whereas metronome marks require increasing verbosity to express the same thing. > >It seems to me that <-q=h-> is completely unambiguous and easy to > >understand. > > Or not, unless it's explained. :) Who wouldn't understand it? Seriously -- what trained musician would misinterpret it? (it also leaves open the ability to specify a loose proportion by using the = that is squiggly, i.e., two ~ atop each other) > >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? > > Maybe not. Having squirmed through performances of my own work where > the metronome markings were entirely ignored (and not because of > technical difficulties), I can underscore that the more lattitude > that's given, the more that will be taken. I'm not saying metronome markings should be ignored. I'm just raising the question of how helpful they are for establishing proportions between two meters. If there's no actual proportion, then a metronome mark is going to have to do (absent some tempo marking that does the job), and that's fine. But I just can't see how q=80 at the beginning and h=80 at the change of meter is going to be more easily perceived by the performer than q=80 at the beginning and <-q=h-> at the time change. Using the metronome marking for the proportional relationship requires the performer to remember the exact metronome marking at the beginning, or to depend on an inner sense of what tempo h=80 actually represents. If the half is supposed to be the same length as the previous quarter, then it seems to me that it's much, much clearer to simply say that, than to require someone to calculate that from a metronome marking. Now, if there's no proportion, then all bets are off. But we wer talking about a proportional relationship to begin with, and I'm only addressing the question of how to best indicate that. To me, it's like the difference between piano roll notation and traditional notation. The former has the virtue of specificity but lacks the clarity and flexibility of interpretation of the latter. > I think we've had this discussion before? We specify notes, harmonies, > tunings, orchestrations, etc., but when it comes to tempos and > dynamics, we're assumed only to want what's approximate and leave it > in the hands of a performer. Where I am specific, I would expect the > performance to be specific. I'm not suggesting that you give up specificity where you need it in your music. I'm simply saying that using metronome marks to indicate a proportion is less easy to understand than using note values (assuming, of course, that there's a note-value proportion that is going to be clearer -- quarter tied to dotted 16th=half is not really going to clarify anything at all). I would also argue that you *can't* have specificity of dynamics and tempo, because all performance situations are different. Environment forces changes to dynamics and tempos while not altering pitch, rhythm and instrumentation -- you likely wouldn't want the same tempo in a dry hall as in a hall with a 5-second acoustic. You wouldn't use the same dynamics and balances in a hall that favored high frequencies. Thus, dynamics and tempo must by definition be variable, even if there is a definite conception in the mind of the composer. This is very different from the other parameters of music composition. Further, dynamics and tempo are not something that are controlled with mechanisms that have fixed intervals. That is, rhythms have only one correct value, pitches have only one correct frequency (within a context -- a B natural in a G chord may be a different frequency than a B natural in an e minor chord; but within any particular G chord there is really only one correct frequency for the B, given an agreed- upon temperament), and our instruments are mostly designed to give us these precise pitches and rhythms. With dynamics, we don't have the ability to set the dynamics in absolute terms, nor tempos (without some outside reference such as a metronome). So, I just don't see this as a problem -- it's a feature of human beings making music, and to me is a *good* thing, as it's the source of variety in performance. Performers who don't understand the style of a piece (or just don't care) may digress in choosing dynamics and tempos, and if they ignore clear indications in the score (e.g., playing q=120 in a passage marked q=80, or playing loud in a passage marked soft), then that's really bad. But it's generally within the "margin of error" if a performer in performance starts a piece marked q=80 at q=90 -- tempo perception is one of those things that can be greatly altered by performance nerves. It's generally within the margin of error inherent to musicians if a passage marked ppp is played only pp, and that can work just fine as long as the context of that pp makes it feel really, really soft, even if from a decibel level, the performer could have played it more softly. I think your valid objections are to willful misinterpretation of scores with clear indications, rather than to small variations like those described above. I'm with you on those objections -- they are the sign of bad or indifferent musicians, and that's something any composer has every right to protest. But trying to overspecify beyond the resolution of human perception is always going to fail to a certain degree, and that's what I'd object to as over-specific. I suspect that in any particular situation, we might disagree on whether the line has been crossed from reasonable human variation into willful flouting of the performance indications, but on the general principle, we probably actually agree (with the caveats noted about tempos in pieces with tape, and so forth). -- 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
