On 31 May 2009 at 13:05, John Howell wrote: > At 12:39 AM -0400 5/31/09, David W. Fenton wrote:
> >The old dot vs. stroke controversy c. 1800 has always struck me as an > >interesting example of engravers having to make decisions on which > >engraving tool to use when copying from a manuscript in which the > >staccatto marks could vary from a dot to a hasty dot that almost > >looks like a stroke, to strokes that are so small they look like > >dots, to regular strokes, and all the way to hasty strokes that are > >very large and sometimes lean and look like our modern tenuto marks. > > An excellent example, David. (And a potential doctoral dissertation > for someone, if I'm not mistaken!) It's already been done: Robert D. Riggs. "Articulation in Mozart's and Beethoven's Sonatas for Violin and Piano." Ph.D. Diss., Harvard, 1987. Riggs concluded that there was no distinction between dot and stroke in this repertory for these two composers, except for one figure in Beethoven, and that was the string figure of repeated 8th notes with dots on them and bowed as a group (usually groups of 4). Beethoven never used anything but clear dots in that context, never a stroke. Elsewhere, strokes and dots were mixed all over the place, with no consistent pattern in the composer autographs, nor in the printed editions of the time. -- 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
