[WORKBENCH] Brahms Op. 119, No. 1

[Knut]

I would just add to John's post above that I would much rather consult well-engraved scores and authoritative texts on the subject of engraving than YouTube videos or random internet sources. John's method of reference is the only one I would trust to give me an adequately nuanced overview of the fundamentals or any specific engraving problem.

While the videos referenced in buster's post certainly adresses some of the fundamental principles concerning ties and slurs, I think they over-simplify certain aspects and present the author's personal preferences as convention in too many cases. I don't have time to go through each of his statements in detail at the moment, but I found a lot to disagree with in the videos I've seen.

[JoeBass]

Hi,

First-time poster here (been lurking for a while).

I thought I'd give this one a go. I've only managed the first page so far, I may do page 2 later. Engraved with Sibelius using the Vienna (Score style) font.
Critique welcome

1 Intermezzo.png (672.69 KiB) Viewed 11256 times

~Joe

[OCTO]

Very nice, it has somehow "relaxed" outlook, which is a good sign for me. Dense - yes, but splendidly dense.

[Knut]

Hi,

First-time poster here (been lurking for a while).

I thought I'd give this one a go. I've only managed the first page so far, I may do page 2 later. Engraved with Sibelius using the Vienna (Score style) font.
Critique welcome
1 Intermezzo.png

~Joe

Nice work, Joe!

My only suggestions for improvement are to keep your slurs and ties somewhat flatter, especially the short ones. I also disagree with the practice exhibited in mm. 1 and 9, of lifting the tie for half a space to avoid it crossing a staff line, but I recognize that some may prefer it this way. I also have some minor gripes concerning the width of your hairpins, placement of certain objects, etc. Most of these are addressed in John Ruggero's excellent commentary on this piece: download/file.php?id=752, and I highly recommend that you take a look at it.

[JoeBass]

Thanks! I'll take a look at John Ruggero's commentary now.
I was going for a close facsimile of the first edition which dictated most of my decisions re object placement/beam angles etc. I'll certainly work on flattening those slurs/ties.
Joe

[John Ruggero]

Welcome to this forum. Joe! That is a beautiful job. I hope that you will finish it as an excellent Sibelius + Vienna font + replica demonstration for this thread. I do like the relative size of the dynamic markings compared to Maestro which sometimes strike me as being a little big. Perhaps I should use a smaller pt size for dynamics since I do like the Maestro glyphs.

I would agree with Knut about the short slurs and ties, but that is relatively minor given the general excellence of your work. (Just to show you that I looked carefully, there is a comma after the rit in m. 16 )

[JoeBass]

Thanks for the warm welcome, John!
I've read your fantastic commentary and I plan to incorporate all of your editorial suggestions (if I can find the time to finish!).
Regarding dynamics, I see that Gould suggests heights of 2.5 spaces for , 2 spaces for and 1 space for . Mine fall a little short of this and I'll consider increasing their size.

~Joe

[Knut]

I do like the relative size of the dynamic markings compared to Maestro which sometimes strike me as being a little big. Perhaps I should use a smaller pt size for dynamics since I do like the Maestro glyphs.

Regarding dynamics, I see that Gould suggests heights of 2.5 spaces for , 2 spaces for and 1 space for . Mine fall a little short of this and I'll consider increasing their size.

Ted Ross proposes similar guidelines for the size of dynamics to those suggested by Elaine Gould.

I think it's important to keep in mind, though, that horizontal size (i.e., italic angle) is equally important. The and in my own font fall short of these guidelines as well. Nevertheless they come across as quite a bit larger than those in the Vienna font, due to their boldness and horizontal size. I personally find the Vienna dynamics to be too slight, but I suspect simply increasing their size could lead to other problems. Too me, the Scarlatti font, designed by Abraham Lee and also based on the default output of SCORE, have much more balanced dynamics, so I would suggest checking it out.

[JoeBass]

Where can I find examples of Abraham Lee's Scarlatti font?
To be fair, Vienna is not optimized to work with Sibelius so I (poorly) eyeballed the dynamic pt. size.
I also have the Partita font but it's glyphs are low quality compared to Vienna. (Vienna appears to be an improved version of Partita rather than a new font)
Partita:

Screenshot 2016-06-23 18.01.45.png (82.81 KiB) Viewed 11195 times

Vienna:

Screenshot 2016-06-23 18.02.01.png (100.33 KiB) Viewed 11195 times

[tisimst]

Where can I find examples of Abraham Lee's Scarlatti font?

FYI, it is called MTF-Scorlatti and it will be available for Sibelius soon! I've revamped the shapes to be curves rather than straight lines where they SHOULD be curves, so it has a much more pleasant appearance at all scales.