Lon Price wrote:
I'm working on a piece by Paganini for a client, and his handling of
tuplets got me wondering about the standards for notating them. This
piece is a theme and variations, and when he writes sextuplets the
first two show the numbers, and then he leaves them off, which I know
is common practice.
I suggest that a highly relevant question here is, "Whose common
practice?" It seems to me that this might be the common practice of the
publisher, the editor, or engraver, and unless one has examined the
autograph, should not be assumed to necessarily be the reflection of the
practice or preference of the composer. I am of the opinion that some
of the "conventions" of notation are actually typographer's conventions,
dating from the period when music was generated with handset type.
Leaving off the numeral in all but the first few tuplets might be
(though I do not have definitive information to confirm whether it is or
is not) might be an example of this. In this instance, the typographer
had a insufficient quantity of the italic numeral 6 to mark every
tuplet, and so marked just enough of the tuplets to indicate the first
ones, even if Paganini had religiously put a six in each and every
sextuplet. Similarly the use of sixteenths instead of thirty-seconds
may be dictated in this instance by typographical considerations.
I would pose a more general question: some practices, like suppressing
numerals on all but the first few tuplets, made a certain amount of
sense when other considerations came to play, but these considerations
do not apply in computer typesetting, as there is an infinite number of
italic numeral sixes, or for that matter, an infinite supply of
secondary beams, in the virtual typecase. In such cases, it seems to me
that if it makes the music more understandable, though not at the
expense of readability, that maybe such considerations should be
re-evaluated.
ns
_______________________________________________
Finale mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
