From Plate to Page with Dorico

[benwiggy]

Following on from my post about buying a plate from Henle, spurred by John Barron's recent video of "From Plate to Page", I thought I'd try to recreate the plate I bought as a page in Dorico.

Here's Henle's page, taken from the plate (luckily a free sample from their website):

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Here's my attempt to match it in Dorico.

Engraving sample - Full score 001.png (814.6 KiB) Viewed 2553 times

Henle really have used every trick in the book to squeeze every bit of space: with very short stems on quaver flags between the staves, and on the beamed the lowest notes of the beams on the 4th and 5th systems; also the quaver flags between the staves.

The note with the Marcato in the middle bar of 2nd system: Henle have really cut the stem short, and moved the articulation slightly sideways to avoid the stem, which Dorico can't do.

Henle also manages to save a lot of space between the 4th and 5th system, e.g. with The Ottava Line intersecting the Slur in 74.

Dorico is quite conservative about space by default, so I had to reduce quite a lot of the "distances between things" in both Layout Options and Engraving Options. Also make the ottava line's dashes very short; and adjust the grace note slash. I'd already set my Engraving Option defaults to be closer to Henle's beams and slurs.

Henle's slurs really 'dive down' to the low notes in the arpeggios; Dorico floats them higher with my settings. There may be ways to match that.

Henle do make you "guess the tuplet", with no numerals given. (Should the right hand in 70 be a tuplet, as in 72..?)

There's still very little manual adjustment done on my page. I've had to rein in a few stems and beams, and then move the systems up and down a bit. And the fingering needed a bit of work.

My result is still not as tight vertically. I dare say I could still find a few things to tweak; but I'd be more tempted to reduce the Staff Size a fraction, to give the page more breathing space, without sacrificing clarity.

Henle's page is 23.5 x 31 cm. The plate is 22 x 30 cm, using Staff size of "3" (7mm).

[John Ruggero]

A really beautiful job, benwiggy, and a great illustration of Dorico's capabilities.

A few things about your version:

1. Henle uses a smaller size fingering for grace notes, which is very common. (I don't, however, because the small numbers can be hard to read.)
2. Dorico has trouble with the length of the arpeggio signs. Henle's are perfect.
3. The fingering in m. 67 is a little too far from the beams.
4. It is unclear which staff the perdendo in m. 63 applies to.
5. The hairpins ins in 69 and 71 apply to the right hand and should be closer to the upper staff.
6. M. 72 is a variation of 70. No triplet is intended in 70. It's not Henle, but Liszt who left out all the triplet numbers. This is normal in solo piano music.
7. A couple of redundant triplet numbers snuck into m. 75. They force the smorzando a little too low.
8. The expressions like perdendo etc. are a little larger than in the Henle. I find Henle's well-balanced with the whole.

Regarding the original:

1. As you said, Dorico has very spacious (I'd call it "liberal" rather than "conservative") default spacing. Henle's is more normal for solo piano music.
2. The pairs of swell hairpins look off-center to me. I prefer them centered on the chords.
3. Note the centered chords in 77 and 79, which should be an option in Dorico, but is not yet, to my knowledge.
4. The engraver ran into a crowding problem with the octave sign in m. 74. Why is not clear since there was plenty of bottom margin to incorporate between the systems. You corrected this in your version.

[benwiggy]

Thanks for your eye, John.

Yes, I'd noticed that the fingering number were smaller on the plate, which again helps to eke out space.
I can improve the over-reach of the arpeggio lines with a couple of Engraving Options, so easy enough.

Yes, I manually centred the bars with whole notes. I have asked for an option to do this automatically, so no doubt it's on the list.


The other thing I was going to mention is that Henle uses a 6-pointed star for the Pedal lift, while all the fonts I have use 8 points!

I may replicate this post on the Dorico forum, as there's a few issues arising. The biggest was the last fingering on down-stem beam. Henle keeps this figure in a line with the others, below the beam, but Dorico ignores the beam, because it doesn't actually collide, moving it much higher up near the staff.
(Daniel has just advised me of a change to make in the Engraving Options for fingering, which solves this problem.)

Not being a proper pianist (I have just bought a new piano, and am practising every day again), it took me ages to work out what was going on in some of the bars; particularly 67.

[John Ruggero]

You are very welcome, benwiggy. And congrats on your new piano! A piece of advice about improving your keyboard skills: if your have the patience, the biggest bang for your buck would be to play all the three and four note major and minor chords (all inversions and possible fingerings) chromatically with both hands an octave apart throughout the entire keyboard, using only your fingers only (no arm pushing, pulling or dead weight). Players rarely do this, unfortunately, but it can produce amazing improvement. Use a simple tapping motion of the fingers with no extension or contraction within the finger itself as the finger depresses the keys.

What was the fingering fix? I've run in to the same thing in Dorico.

What was it about m. 67 that bothered you? I am slightly suspicious about the RH fermata and would love to see the manuscript. There is a case like this in a Beethoven sonata where the fermata should encompass the entire triplet and was incorrectly applied to the middle note only.

[benwiggy]

Increase the value of Minimum horizontal gap between fingering and other item on the Fingering page of Engraving Options from its default of 1/8 space.

(I noticed that when I italicised the final fingering on a down-stem beam, the fingering moved to below the stem, because the italic glyph was wide enough to "collide" with the beam. This is the case for Sebastian and FinaleMaestro, but not Bravura. Essentially, the engraving option above makes Dorico think things are colliding when they are a certain distance apart.)

Bar 67: "Too many notes!"

[Schonbergian]

A piece of advice about improving your keyboard skills: if your have the patience, the biggest bang for your buck would be to play all the three and four note major and minor chords (all inversions and possible fingerings) chromatically with both hands an octave apart throughout the entire keyboard, using only your fingers only (no arm pushing, pulling or dead weight). Players rarely do this, unfortunately, but it can produce amazing improvement. Use a simple tapping motion of the fingers with no extension or contraction within the finger itself as the finger depresses the keys.

I'm not sure what specifically is behind this, but it indeed makes a tremendous difference in my keyboard playing. Thanks for this.

[John Ruggero]

Thank you very much, Schonbergian! I am glad that you saw such a quick result. The first time I tried it, I was stunned by the difference in such a short time. Here's another one you might try. It is so "simple" that it never occurs to pianists. Yet it is the most basic of all piano exercises and possibly the most profound. Play all the white keys with a single finger of one hand. Start in the middle of the keyboard and work toward the ends and back. Then all the black keys. Try to find the most balanced position of the whole arm and finger over each key. This will change subtly for every key and finger. Use finger action only, as described above. Do not use arm weight to play the key, but you might try resting on the keybed with a little weight as a test of balance. Shift the arm around to see where the balance point is.Then relieve the arm pressure or weight, which is a no-no in fine playing. Do the exercise with all 10 fingers.