Placement of tuplets

[John Ruggero]

Here is an example of how music customs do not always improve. The first example is from the first movement of the first edition of Beethoven's Sonata op. 31 no. 1. One sees he dramatic peaks and valleys of the music as if it were mountain range:

Beethoven op 31 no 1 Naegeli .png (1.58 MiB) Viewed 6197 times

This wonderful picture was destroyed already in the 19th century in the Breitkopf Complete Works. A new custom of dividing the hands between the two staves had come into fashion. It was "easier" for people who, for some reason, couldn't read right hand notes on the lower staff. And it allowed rules regarding stem direction to be observed more rigidly. So the musical picture has been flattened. Where are the mountains and valleys? Was this new custom progress?

Beethoven op 31 no 1 B&H .png (729.05 KiB) Viewed 6197 times

[Shinohara Hoshi]

Deleted

[John Ruggero]

Yes, the single-note in the measure issue. Thanks for bringing that one up. Then there is the bad position of the stem-side two-note slur. If I had a dollar for each one of those...

I agree completely that tuplet brackets are necessary in complex contemporary music. However, I also think that they are over-used by those who are writing less rhythmically complex music. I would go so far as to say that music up to a Brahms level of complexity rarely needs tuplet brackets. The only tuplet brackets that I use in editing 18th and 19th century music is in the footnotes when I am writing out complex ornamentation, and not often.

Current publishers are doing a much better job of being authentic, as you showed in your examples. Wiener Urtext in particular. It goes back to the work of my hero Heinrich Schenker, Hans Bishcoff and other fine editors of the later 19th and early 20th century.

But there are still many things that are being misunderstood and lost in the engraving process.

Here is one example from the first prelude in the WTC I in the Henle edition. The notes with the arrows have up stems in Bach's manuscript. (This was first pointed out by Schenker in the 1920s.)

Bach Henle.png (292.18 KiB) Viewed 6175 times

This is because there is a melodic gap between the F sharp and the following A flat. (Gounod actually filled this gap in with an extra measure and a bass G in his Ave Maria.) What Bach is telling us by changing the stem direction is that the F sharp leads to the G from below and the A flat leads to the G from above, but the F sharp is NOT leading to the A flat melodically. They are in two different "voices":

Bach WTC I.1B copy.png (1.21 MiB) Viewed 6175 times