Piano pedal vertical alignment

[NeeraWM]

Why do I find those pedal lines in between the staves sexy?! :-D

[John Ruggero]

Because here they get the point across better than putting them below the staff?

[Anders Hedelin]

Thanks for your reply, John! I like your engraving very much, and especially that you abandon the conventions of pedal marks placement when there's a good reason for it. Thanks to that your edition is clearer and closer to the MS than the -53 Henle edition!

[John Ruggero]

I really appreciate that, Anders. Thank you so much; it means a lot to me. I am trying to take the best of all eras rather than adhering to any particular convention while still avoiding anything that would create difficulties for a modern player.

I do see a whole rest that needs attention.

[Anders Hedelin]

You are very wlecome, John.

[NeeraWM]

You are very wlecome, John.

"a whole rest" - I guess you mean "a lot of other things"? It would be astonishing if, in an edition of B's piano sonatas, there was just one whole rest that needed attention!

I believe he means the whole rest in the left hand of bar 199.
Generally, it seems that even when the whole rests are within the staff, the "stafflet" line above them is still visible.
Is this Finale doing that?

[John Ruggero]

Yes, it is the the whole rest in 199 that needs attention. If you are seeing the "stafflet" of the whole rests on the staff (I don't), it may be an artifact of some kind. It is not visible in the printed copy. Here is a screen shot of the PDF at high magnification:

Whole rest.png (57.88 KiB) Viewed 3923 times

[Anders Hedelin]

These are really very minor considerations, but to my eye I think it would look more natural or expected if the whole rest in 199 were aligned with the bottom staffline, and if the ledger line of the whole rest in 200 were a little longer, as in both the Schenker and -53 Henle edition. (In Schenker the ledger line might even be a little too long.)

Rests - Henle.JPG (13.22 KiB) Viewed 3905 times

(In 201-5 the Henle engraver seems to have forgotten to respect B's downwards stems!)

[John Ruggero]

Yes, that is the adjustment I was referring to in m. 199, Anders. I think you are right about the short "stafflets" (ledger line) that Finale provides for the whole rests. But I guess I am stuck with that. It does look a little better in actual print. Maybe there is a solution that someone knows.

Great point about the stem direction, Anders. Several editions I just consulted, including Schenker (see example earlier) follow conventional stem direction here to the detriment of the wonderful visual picture of the music dropping into the left hand and the lowest register. And Beethoven consistently maintains down stems throughout the following measures as well.

[Anders Hedelin]

Having no jobs at the moment I experimented a little with whole and half rests with ledger lines (as I call them, because I think that's what they are, really).

In Finale 27 you have access to the SMuFL fonts. In Finale Maestro the preselected whole and half rests have the same too short ledger lines as in former Maestro. It's possible to change them in Document Options to glyphs U+E4F4 (whole) and U+E4F5 (half) and get a decent-looking ledger line on both.

Rests with longer ledger lines.JPG (14.24 KiB) Viewed 3825 times

(The lacking exactness of the example above doesn't show in print or magnification.)

If you don't have Finale 27, I've created four expressions that would match the improved rests above. The original rests are best inserted to have a positioning reference, and then hidden not to interfere graphically with the expressions.

Rests - longer ledger line Expr.musx

(107.88 KiB) Downloaded 107 times

Vertical positions are set to be as close to one space below/above the staff as possible, but can naturally be changed manually. The horizontal positioning needs manual adjusting in any case, since there's no useful global setting for that, at least not that I know of.
Please use them if you like them!