If the students get the stuff in the guide, that seems to me not a bad basis for a lifelong discovery of the best way to notate. Plenty to argue with but some of that is due to it being instructions for a specific situation rather than a general style manual. If every new composition followed the instructions 90% of them would be 90% better. Now to jump off the fence.. ;-) I find if you use accents for phrasing - or even some neutral symbol - there are plenty of musicians who telegraph the phrasing in a less subtle way than with cross-bar beaming. I've done it both ways to secure sight-reading in studios. For a large group I wouldn't write across bar if everyone was different (Neither would I use accents). Sectionally though it works fine. The key is that the conductor conducts the metre! I'm surprised that no-one has mentioned phrase marks for brass or wind. I've only ever seen a few examples where there is any real issue as to wether something is phrase-marked or slurred. This is I think an example of 'we don't want it'. A lot of these things are emotional rather than technical decisions for a composer. I don't generally write phrase marks but after 40 minutes of music I might feel the need to put one in. The hope is that the sight of it conveys something of my feelings in needing to write it...
Steve P. _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
