Xenakis

[John Ruggero]

Peter, I don't have a copy of this. Are page turns a consideration, or even possible?

[Peter West]

In which? Evryali?

[Knut]

Day 1 of Evryali. nothing difficult in Finale here, but extremely time consuming. The original generally has 2 bars per system, I'm trying where possible to get 3, but it is a bit tight and makes avoiding accidental collisions quite challenging. The attached is the end of a hard days work, as I entered it, no print out, no checking, so there will be problems. I'll do a thorough check before it goes to first proof, of course.

Wow! That's a lot of work. Congrats!

Durand's hairpin settings work really well here.
Also, this piece demonstrates perfectly why I feel it's desirable for stems to be thinner than staff lines.

[Knut]

Peter,

looking at your test pre proof again, I'm wondering if the horizontal spacing and distribution couldn't be much improved with the occasional split measure. With the consistency of time signature and long beam groups, I would think this could be an improvement without compromising clarity.

What do you think?

I agree, but generally split bars are an absolute last resort. I wouldn't do it without consulting the editor, with one exception here where it was clearly impossible to fit all the notes onto a system. If it is required I can do it.

I know they are perceived as such, but I must admit that I personally wouldn't mind seeing them a little bit more often, especially in music laid out on A4 paper at 6 or 7mm staff size. I may well be in the minority here, but if there are a lot of pickups in the phrasing of the music (as in this piece), I personally don't mind them at all. To me it's generally much more important to have system breaks at the end of a phrase than exactly according to the meter. Then again, I haven't spent my entire life reading music, like most classical musicians.

It would be interesting to hear what others think about this, though, both in general and in this specific context.

[John Ruggero]

Peter wrote:

In which?

In all the pieces.

I am interested because of your comment that one of the pieces was originally in a three page format, indicating that at least originally, someone was concerned about ease of use. Now the publisher wants to avoid fold-out pages; but maybe clever page turns are still a possibility. Were I engraving these pieces, that would be my first priority, unless it were an absolute impossibility, which, unfortunately, does seem likely in this case, given the dense style.

[Peter West]

In this piece it is better to have a single view if possible. It is possible to duplicate a bar across a page so that a turn can be made in the middle of a bar without using system breaks but it is hazardous.

Evryali and Mists have a couple of page turn opportunities, but not enough to apply them consistently throughout the score. For now I'm producing them without, but later that may be changed. To be honest though, at this stage I cannot see how it would be done.

[Peter West]

Just as I was beginning to think 4 staves would be enough...
(all previous caveats apply)

There are still some spacing issues to deal with here, I know.

[John Ruggero]

Thanks, Peter. I watched the two YouTube videos of the MIDI performances with score and Mists has many page-turning opportunities. Evryali represents challenges in some sections, but I think that there would be more or less good places for page turns. I hope the publisher does the right thing; the performer needs all the help they can get.

[Peter West]

I've not looked at Mists in detail yet. All I can remember are the horrors from an engraving viewpoint.

All efforts are on Evryali at the moment. Once I have entered all the data I'll look for page turn options, but right now I'm ploughing through endless bars of 4 staves linked to single beams. It's not difficult, it's just arduous and time consuming.

[OCTO]

A question : regarding Xenakis, isn't it better to start engraving from the layout point of view rather first to enter all the notes and then to move it around?

If possibility permitting, I would discuss with the editor/publisher what they want and after that I would look at all pieces together, calculate pageturns, spacing (including fontsizes and fonttypes) and papersize and, after this has been done, to start engraving.
I would provide the editor small snippets to see if the font, size and spacing is well balanced before starting to enter everything.

I would use first a kind of graphical representation of the systems where the maximum/minimum horizontal and vertical spacing would be clearly defined.

Just my two cents.