Beaming conventions

[John Ruggero]

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Luckily, there's no need to find that out, since it does most of them automatically, or with settings specified before entering the piece. The only two exceptions are the beams in the upper voice and the augmentation dot (both 2 steps). Personally, I would never have offset the dot (but would have needed to spend the extra time aligning it if I was using Finale), so for me, that leaves a single step.

And of course, I was comparing what I would have to do to get the results that I wanted in both programs.

The four offset middle voice note-heads were not close enough to the upper voice note-heads in the Dorico default example for complete legibility, at least to my taste, and I would have adjusted them in Dorico, just as I did with the Finale. Is there is a setting in Dorico that might have made this adjustment automatically? I found it a very ticklish adjustment and would want refine it further if this were for publication.

[Knut]

Sorry, John. I missed that because of your positive first reaction.

Anyway, Dorico does indeed provide settings for this as well as a couple related cases:

Skjermbilde 2016-10-24 kl. 23.19.55.png (437.12 KiB) Viewed 10633 times

[John Ruggero]

Sorry, John. I missed that because of your positive first reaction.

Anyway, Dorico does indeed provide settings for this as well as a couple related cases:

I reacted so favorably because Dorico gives remarkably good default output. Then I noticed that small adjustments were still needed, but assumed they would be as easy as in Finale. When it started to dawn on me that the small adjustments might be more awkward in Dorico than Finale, I began to wonder if its initial advantage over Finale was really meaningful for my uses.

Those settings look good, but are they global? If so, I don't think that it would take care of all cases in a piece. And if local, it seems much less direct and friendly than my trusty mouse.

[Knut]

Those are global settings, and while I'm certain that there are some situations where adjustments are needed, I think the right values here should take care of the vast majority of cases.

[John Ruggero]

Those are global settings, and while I'm certain that there are some situations where adjustments are needed, I think the right values here should take care of the vast majority of cases.

I am sure that you are right; but unfortunately it's the non-confoming situations that would be the show-stoppers for me.

I'll probably try the Dorico demo out of curiosity; but if, as it appears, the most efficient ways for me to work are actually punished and even prohibited by the program, it will obviously be a no-go for me.

[Knut]

I am sure that you are right; but unfortunately it's the non-confoming situations that would be the show-stoppers for me.

Same here. And at the moment, since you can't move notes manually in Dorico, the program can't handle anything besides what's covered by it's global settings. Hopefully, though, the special cases will prove to be easy enough to deal with.

[MJCube]

However, when such patterns appear in solo or chamber music, it would depend on what the composer is expressing. I can imagine cases where secondary beam breaks would be visually disruptive and suggest an inner accentuation where none is desired. Examples by JS Bach come to mind:
…
But what is your opinion?

You’ve described my point of view exactly. In the case of this guitar excerpt, I notice it is certainly harder for me to read the 32nd-note run at sight without the beam break. In your Bach excerpt mm. 3 and 18 are easy because they’re completely scalar; m. 20 is harder to parse at first, but then it’s a sequence, so the pattern gets ingrained quickly. And the unbroken beam in each bar helps to emphasize the sequence, rather than the beats.

(Also to my eye secondary beam breaks don’t suggest accentuation as much as complete breaks.)

[John Ruggero]

In the case of this guitar excerpt, I notice it is certainly harder for me to read the 32nd-note run at sight without the beam break. In your Bach excerpt mm. 3 and 18 are easy because they’re completely scalar; m. 20 is harder to parse at first, but then it’s a sequence, so the pattern gets ingrained quickly. And the unbroken beam in each bar helps to emphasize the sequence, rather than the beats.

(Also to my eye secondary beam breaks don’t suggest accentuation as much as complete breaks.)

Those are excellent points: some patterns lend themselves better than others to unbroken beaming, and secondary beam breaks are not as disruptive as complete breaks, which is what makes them so useful.

A corollary would be that beaming style can bring out or obscure the meaning of pattern. In the Bach example, the unbroken run of a 12th in the third measure represents an expansion of the opening five-note motive of the piece. Breaking the 16ths into 4 + 4 + 4 would work against this relationship. The beaming also suggests a very fast tempo for this piece and in one beat per measure.

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Come to think of it, clarifying secondary beam breaking may be a relatively new notation. I don't recall seeing it in autographs or early editions of Baroque and Classic music, so Bach may have only had a choice between complete breaks or no breaks.

Here is another example, which I may have used before. Not only does Liszt not break primary or secondary beams in this first edition, he doesn't even break at the end of the measure, for a similar reason to the Bach: the pattern represents a long E# that finally resolves to F# at the last minute.

Liszt beaming.jpg (57.19 KiB) Viewed 10598 times

Here is the Peters edition edited by Emil von Sauer, who adds secondary beam breaks. To me this is needless and disruptive.

Liszt beaming 2.jpg (43.29 KiB) Viewed 10598 times

Unbroken beaming pervades the entire Hungarian Rhapsody no. 11. Some of the patterns are not simple scales and thus harder to read, as you pointed out. http://petrucci.mus.auth.gr/imglnks/usi ... 244.11.pdf

[MJCube]

I can see this Liszt case both ways. Obviously the composer’s gesture is sort of marred by the breaks in Peters. The question to me is: Should the two hands be really synchronized? The very wide distance between the notes on the two staves makes extra work to see which 16th lines up with which 8th. The breaks clarify that this is not some tuplet but straight 16ths, so I can play it at sight with much less time figuring it out. But maybe Liszt intended a “loose” synchrony between the hands. The chromaticism suggests that the timing doesn’t much matter, and the original beaming that the gesture should have some swoop. Very interesting.

[John Ruggero]

Should the two hands be really synchronized?

The chromaticism suggests that the timing doesn’t much matter, and the original beaming that the gesture should have some swoop.

I think the hands should be synchronized and have never heard it played otherwise. But I agree with the swoop. It's in the Gypsy style and often played with an aggressive push and strong cresc. to the end of the run.

The very wide distance between the notes on the two staves makes extra work to see which 16th lines up with which 8th

I totally agree. This aspect was badly engraved. The two staves of piano music should only be as far apart as forced by the prevailing circumstances.

The breaks clarify that this is not some tuplet but straight 16ths, so I can play it at sight with much less time figuring it out.

In my opinion, ease of reading takes second fiddle (in this case, Gypsy fiddle ) to the composer's need to use our limited notational palette freely to communicate ideas in solo and chamber music. This goes out the window in orchestral settings, however, for obvious reasons.