Cueing – Use Cases

[Alexander Ploetz]

The thread about Universal Edition's product design standards, at this point, has nicely derailed into a discussion of cueing. That is a topic that I find highly interesting, so I thought, why not create a dedicated thread to talk about the intricacies of cues.

Undercueing, Overcueing, what to choose and why, how should it look, what's to avoid... it's more or less an open thread, within its general topic. As a suggestion I'd like to ask, though, to make ample use of concrete examples, instead of having an abstract conversation.

For starters, I'd like to throw in the most unorthodox cue (not the most interesting one, though) I have yet placed. Imagine two movements, the second one following attacca out of the first. We have an instrument that does not play in the first movement (and is not even listed in that movement's first score system) but which has to confidently play at the very beginning of the second movement. After discussing this with several orchestra musicians, it turns out that there is a potential need to have a cue at the end of a tacet movement, even though I have never seen this anywhere else before. This is what I ended up with:

[John Ruggero]

I think that it would be much better to show the entire movement with cues at the beginning, middle and end. After all, it's only 40 measures long and linked to the next movement. It doesn't matter that the instrument doesn't appear in the score in this movement.

And actually, if this is a set of many short movements with changing instrumentation, some of which connect, I would be reluctant to use tacets in any of the parts. But one would need to see the exact situation to see if this concern is really justified.

I think that tacets are best in large works with highly defined beginnings and endings.

[John Ruggero]

I forgot to say that this thread is a great idea!

Also, I don't understand the double bar at the beginning of the cue. Does this mean a key change? Or an indication of the missing music before the cue? And what about a time signature? One of the problems with innovating in this way is that unsuspected problems can arise as well as the dreaded questions in the rehearsal.

As usual, the repeated note slashes running counter to the beam direction in the last measure of the cue look unattractive to me.

[Knut]

Here's an interesting related case. I've had this method disapproved by conductors before, but I'm guessing that it's usefulness would depend largely on the availability of clear entry points in the piece.

Skjermbilde 2016-07-29 kl. 10.58.03.png (845.56 KiB) Viewed 12334 times

[John Ruggero]

For the record, I recall no mid-movement taceting when assisting Arnstein. It would have been completely counter to the kind of clear orientation he was trying to provide to prevent the player from having to write in their own cues. The fact that conductors are squeamish speaks volumes to me; it certainly doesn't meet my own risk-reward test.

This kind of thing was more understandable in the days of hand copying and high engraving costs. But why would one do it now?

[Knut]

For the record, I recall no mid-movement taceting when assisting Arnstein. It would have been completely counter to the kind of clear orientation he was trying to provide to prevent the player from having to write in their own cues. The fact that conductors are squeamish speaks volumes to me; it certainly doesn't meet my own risk-reward test.

This kind of thing was more understandable in the days of hand copying and high engraving costs. But why would one do it now?

I completely agree that this kind of taceting isn't generally a good idea. My only point was that it could potentially be a good enough solution if the score would facilitate very clear entry points and sufficiently long cues, i.e., in situations where providing the exact number of measures rest would seem more or less superfluous. I recognize that such cases are propably rare, but even so, they probably do exist.

Even nowadays, publishers are concerned about paper costs, and this kind of cuing could easily save a lot of pages in a larger set of parts. It also provides added flexibility with regard to page layout.

[John Ruggero]

Knut, I certainly agree with you that everything should be done to facilitate matters for the player, even if that means leaving out measures. However, in my opinion, the part must meet the following rule:

A competent player without any knowledge of the piece other than what appears in the part should be able to play it with the ensemble with complete security the very first time.

As far as publishers, with Arnstein, blank and half pages were used wherever necessary for optimal page turning and the total number of pages was never a concern. Of course, these were rental parts produced in small quantities.

But I don't think it praiseworthy if a publisher produces parts that cause players trouble simply to save money, even if it is mass-produced. And I encounter this every day as a pianist. Pieces that should be printed on facing pages aren't, because a blank page might be needed elsewhere. Pianists world-wide fight chamber music scores because no concern was given to page turns etc.

[Knut]

Agreed!

[David Ward]

Over reliance on cues for entries does have its hazards. In the 1980s (or thereby) in Siegfried's funeral march before the last scene of Götterdämmerung in one of the world's top opera houses, the timpanist played a little figure a bar early and immediately realized his mistake. However, this was the cue in all four trombone parts: result, the trombones played the climactic section of the funeral march fff a bar out from everyone else.

At just after 23 minutes into this long interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJSExE2kJGU a principal trumpet tells of his being hopelessly lost in a very high profile performance of an earlier part of the Ring, and of his being saved (twice) by his second trumpet. I don't know whether or not this was down to inadequate cues.

[John Ruggero]

David, are you referring to the short timpani 2 cue, 14 measures after rehearsal 40 in the Trombones of Act 3? It introduces the Lugubre (Feierlich) with the trombones and timpani 1 entering FF.

http://ks.imslp.info/files/imglnks/usim ... .tbn12.pdf