OOLOI - Igor Engraver reborn

[Magnus Johansson]

Would you here give one or more example cases where it is necessary?

For me, it would mostly be situations where crowding makes small adjustments necessary, generally in the horizontal plane, but perhaps also in the vertical. And special situations arise, for example, where two clefs are used simultaneously on a single staff (Debussy) and workarounds are required in current software.

I believe Igor Engraver covers all those cases.

[Magnus Johansson]

John, if this is what you meant with two clefs simultaneously on one staff where the upper -- and not the lower -- left hand voice is in treble clef, then it is not possible in Igor Engraver. Claude Debussy was a great composer but I think this is improper notation.

67a4ba40b590c53e5c35de89d60b4d1b04cf66f3_2_690x254.png (26.47 KiB) Viewed 2015 times

[John Ruggero]

Yes, that is the type of case. And sometimes a small bass clef is used out of normal vertical position but remains a normal F clef in terms of its meaning. I believe that I have also seen this done with the G-clef.

[MalteM]

From Préludes livre 1:

Small bass clef

Bildschirmfoto vom 2025-12-19 12-45-56.png (98.58 KiB) Viewed 1995 times

Treble clef placed horizontally between simultaneously sounding notes

Bildschirmfoto vom 2025-12-19 12-45-41.png (60.51 KiB) Viewed 1995 times

[John Ruggero]

Great examples. Thanks MailteM.

This one "has it all". Brahms Piano Sonatas no. 3 first movement from the B&H complete works edition. Brahms himself kept it simple and didn't put in the small clarification clefs.

Brahms Piano Sonata no 3.1.png (137.77 KiB) Viewed 1976 times

[Magnus Johansson]

Great examples. Thanks MailteM.

This one "has it all". Brahms Piano Sonatas no. 3 first movement from the B&H complete works edition. Brahms himself kept it simple and didn't put in the small clarification clefs.

Brahms Piano Sonata no 3.1.png

The right hand voice with the dotted quarter note on f¹, where does it go after the f¹?

[John Ruggero]

The dotted quarter F goes on to the soprano F in the next measure. Brahms didn't use a dotted half note because the F has to be replayed by the left hand. And he didn't write rests after the dotted quarter F because rests would give the impression that it purposefully stops mid-way through the measure, when conceptually it holds through the rest of the measure.

[Magnus Johansson]

The dotted quarter F goes on to the soprano F in the next measure. Brahms didn't use a dotted half note because the F has to be replayed by the left hand.

Has Brahms himself given this explanation somewhere?

And he didn't write rests after the dotted quarter F because rests would give the impression that it purposefully stops mid-way through the measure, when conceptually it holds through the rest of the measure.

But if the sixteenth note f¹ later in the same bar shall sound staccato the rest is actually there.

[Roland_Gurt]

Not weird, at least to me, but:

1. Everything on the page to be movable and editable on a case-by-case basis: Every clef, every accidental in every key signature, every line in every double bar line, every dot in every repeat sign etc.

2. Automatic layout functions can be turned on and off, again on a case-by-case basis and the layout done entirely by the user.

3. Anything hand-placed by the user can be designated as fixed in place and not to be touched by the program.

4. Bezier curves for slurs can be turned off and control points added anywhere by the user so the slur can be adjusted entirely by hand.

To add to this important comment: there are even cases where ledger lines are moved slightly closer together, e.g. for a single low note in the voice which would otherwise push the lyrics line too far down; or for a single high note where vertical space is valuable.

As far as I’m aware, this is not currently possible with any scoring software.

Another detail that was reported elsewhere on this forum is the practice of scaling noteheads horizontally, sometimes used for cue/grace notes to save horizontal space while retaining good legibility.

Of course, the capabilities described by John_Ruggero (that also include scaling, rotating, skewing) would be invaluable for any editorial or contemporary work.

And I think it’s important that all such changes (or "overrides") are purely visual and do not change the musical backbone of the score.

[John Ruggero]

The dotted quarter F goes on to the soprano F in the next measure. Brahms didn't use a dotted half note because the F has to be replayed by the left hand.

Has Brahms himself given this explanation somewhere?

And he didn't write rests after the dotted quarter F because rests would give the impression that it purposefully stops mid-way through the measure, when conceptually it holds through the rest of the measure.

But if the sixteenth note f¹ later in the same bar shall sound staccato the rest is actually there.

This kind of thing is so prevalent in keyboard music that no composer has to give an explanation. Keyboard players just understand this through experience.

One must understand the difference between "actually" and "conceptually". Some things are heard as "there" in music even when they are not actually present. This is particularly true of keyboard music. Were this an orchestral piece, Brahms would have written the F as a dotted half note. But this was not possible as a keyboard piece and he was forced to end the note early. But he wants the pianist to give the impression that the note is holding through the staccato left hand note. In this case, the impression is easy to create because the ear is distracted by the two staccato F's.