At 04:42 PM 2/13/06 -0500, David W. Fenton wrote: >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?
It's hard to anticipate how a performer would interpret markings. (Realize that I'm not one of those who specifies tempo in painful detail anymore, but I do understand the kind of scores that would.) When it comes to matters which might be misinterpreted, composers seem to go for redundancy and comment, even in those fat 19th century scores. A parenthetical phrase such as "overall tempo is flexible, but keep rhythmic proportion exact" would do. For me it's a matter of disambiguation. If it's important, mark it. That goes for bowings, conducting beats, etc. Some composers clutter up their scores with hundreds of markings. I've engraved some of those, and where they matter, they produce an amazing result. But arbitrary over-marking is different. >My point is that proportions can handle all the permutations very >clearly, whereas metronome marks require increasing verbosity to >express the same thing. The only reason I don't assume you're right is because the question came from an accomplished musician on this list. If there is a question, then there's an ambiguity that needs to be clarified. (This also relates to the dangerous 'swing' question and its stylistic suggestion that may get lost or changed in the mists of history. The 'swing' components are hardly alike in Joplin, Ellington, Goodman, Parker, Hurt, Monk, Ayler, Coltrane, and Ware.) [...] >> >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? Arrows suggest direction and change. They might be interpreted as moving from one to the other rather than changing abruptly. If a properly positioned q=h and <-q=h=> are functionally equivalent, what exactly to the arrows show? Maybe it's just me, but I can't read it instantly. >(it also leaves open the ability to specify a loose proportion by >using the = that is squiggly, i.e., two ~ atop each other) Yes, indeed. >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. I agree. My concern is that notational shorthand is not always a good thing. Further explanations help. Explanations might not facilitate a first reading, but they should at least clarify a meaning to a conductor or a performer who will spend more than a casual reading on a piece. >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. [...] You may well be right. We share (or shared, since I haven't done it for at least 15 years) considerable experience in early music. There was a great mystery in these proportions and rhythms in HAM vs. when those 'new' Oxford editions were first appearing, for example. The interpretation in various editions was sometimes wildly different. I have a hideously expensive Minne/Meistergesang Troubador/Trouvere edition ca. 1970 (expensive when I was younger, that is, and sadly lost in one of my moves) which differs so radically in rhythm from the Appel presentation ca. 1950 that it might be a different piece entirely (Be m'an perdut). Not being an early music scholar, I couldn't put together my own. Admittedly, evidence from 500 years past is scant. But imagine if this same interpretive dilemma faces future performers trying to get a real sense of what composers wanted in their dim past. Despite our propensity for playing something contemporary once and then abandoning it, that's not necessarily what the future will be like. If what we write is important, we have to clarify our meaning. >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 don't agree, but then I can read piano roll notation. (I had to -- I was teaching a composition student who had learned to read it as his first notation, and could make absolutely no sense out of the irregular steps in staff notation! And it was amazing how much clearer his vertical relationships became for me without the intervening abstraction of altered pitches (vs. absolute pitches).) Let me veer off a little here, because it's not always an issue of specified tempo vs. interpretation. This is not about piano roll notation either, but about the specificity of beat and how performers can be confounded by even a simple one. I had the experience recently. For background, think of Beethoven's "Coriolanus" overture (I think that's the one) where the tempo remains precise and the note values and frequency of rests change to create the illusion of rallentando at the end. My string quartet from last year was written for a group in Ghent that frequently performed newer music. The tempo was to be held to fairly tightly, with much of the bending of tempo and rhythms written into the music -- in particular because much of my music doesn't have much interest in barlines, but performers do. So I give them barlines in plain old 4/4, but they are only positional guideposts. (The quartet that was supposed to play it didn't; their leader was sick. The replacement quartet, made up from players from four countries, was at a loss to understand how to play it -- it wasn't hard, but adding their string-quartetty romanticism to it caused, shall we say, a loss of stability in performance. To be kind.) So I pose this question to you and anybody who's still reading. :) Given a situation where a composer wants a Coriolanus-esque change of temporal expression, but throughout a piece, what's the best route? 1. No barlines (so as not to suggest anything that isn't true) save for dotted barlines in very occasional places where the material is simultaneous. The note lengths determinine the timing. 2. Same as #1, but with arbitrary regular barlines as counting signposts, and the note values reworked to fall properly within the pseudo-measures. 3. Same as #2, but with frequent meter changes to accommodate the note values as much as possible. 4. Barlines with ongoing "rit." and "accel." markings along with tempo changes every couple of bars. 5. A combination of 3 and 4. 6. Another option? It's not a question of leaving the interpretation up to the performers. Something specific needs to be indicated, or the piece can't be understood. A new piece is a new piece. It doesn't belong to a tradition yet (and where it might, it wouldn't need notation to explain that). And this isn't 18th century music, and not even 19th century music that *was* frequently littered with changes. When I've done #1 above, performers have complained that it's impossible to know where they were. They refused to read the score (even with only a few parts) and so were stuck reading from separate parts without 'signposts'. I have often had to make performance scores with arbitrary barlines as in #2 -- but the failure was that the performers then *counted* and misinterpreted tied notes and irregular-appearing rhythms as syncopations and got the emphases all wrong (think of bad editions of Ockeghem, for example, without the barlines between staves ... what's the term for that? I forget. Mensurstreiche or something that's escaped my fading mind). I've given up doing #3 because I frequently write for professional musicians with limited new music experience -- and counting is the primary failure I've seen. I've never done #4 because it just seemed, well, excessive and not likely to represent the linear flow accurately at all. So this is a kind of expanded question about these tempo issues. Onward... >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. It's sometimes thought of as different, but we've come a long was in music since the days when its basics were just "melody, harmony, rhythm". Environmental forces may play into it, but so do they in relativee harmonic content of orchestration, in a relative pitch base (even in Baroque music, and wildly so), etc. While these elements have been increasingly standardized (or were, before the original performance movement), the idea that tempo and dynamics cannot be specified well has been an intractable and I think faulty assumption. My assumption is that 99% of listeners will hear my music on a recording, not in a live concert. That considerably alters what a composer can reasonably expect in terms of tempo, dynamics, balance, etc. The failings of a live space do not have to be replicated on a recording -- even if it is a recording of the same concert in the same live space concertgoers heard. So these elements can be specified with the assumption that 99% of listeners will hear them as written, and 1% may not because of extra-compositional factors. In other words, there's no reason for me as a composer to be chained to an outdated assumption. >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. >From a historical perspective, yes. But tempo is surely controllable if the expectation is that the marking will be respected. There's fluctuation in pitch and harmony and rhythm, and I see an equivalent fluctuation of tempo as acceptable. Too much so, and you have changed the style of the composition. As for dynamics, this issue has been developing over the past half-century. Numerous dynamic systems have been suggested to replace the 11 dynamics from ppppp to ffff. None have solved the problem because 11 dynamic levels is really a pretty good outline -- *not* good enough for detailed presentation in the final 'mix' (whether live or on recording), but a good outline. I'm not going to take up the fight on this one, but clear levels of relative balance exist in this composer's mind (and the recording engineer's mind, especially the very good ones). How these balances are to be indicated accurately on the page is for the next generation to deal with. And they might only deal with it in the mix, since recording remains how most people hear music. >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. I agree with the latter, but not without caveat. It seems to me that raising the level of respect, if you will, for the good judgment of the composer in matters of tempo and dynamics is important. Performers continue to roll over these indications as if they were simply hints of a thought of a suggestion of a possibility. The move to specify tempo (as in indications like 'q=62.2') and rhythms and tempi (again, ref. the new complexity composers) brings with it an awareness that such markings *do* matter. With experience and persistence, they will. [...insightful comments snipped...] >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. I see 'willful misinterpretation' as any deliberate and significant variation from clear markings on a score. Times have changed, it seems to me, and 'q=72' does not mean the same as 'q=ca. 72'. It's incumbent on the performers to understand the intent of the composer well enough in taking on a piece to determine if the composer meant the former or the latter. Also, I have a stricter standard of performance, particularly in the matter of tempo. I'm far from alone. In post-performance quiet, when the exuberance has faded, I've talked to composer after composer who was disappointed that these very basics in the score were not properly attended to before the performers veered off into 'interpretation' mode. >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. Our level of perception rises to the challenge. Just think of Ives, now a century old, or Stockhausen of 50 years ago, or Eckardt or Ferneyhough today. We can get it if the performers can get it. Thanks once again for the conversation, Dennis -- Please participate in my latest project: http://maltedmedia.com/people/bathory/365-2007.html _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
