NOTATIO

Hi all

This just came up on the Lilypond forum. https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lily ... 00032.html

What are your preferred ways to notate a chromatic unison in a chord?

It seems like Elaine Gould says to use angled stems. Gardner Read gives 3 solutions: (see image) It looks to me like the angled stem is a 20th century invention...? Older autographs (like Chopin) dont use them, but 20th cent. composers (Bartok et al) did use them. Frankly, i think the angled stems are clunky-looking and a bit ugly, but thats just me.

So, what do you do?

I've rarely faced myself with this problem, but I like the third Gardner Read solution.

I'll check later to see how I may have actually done this over the decades in manuscript, or indeed in Finale. (I got home on Sunday after over six weeks away to find the telephone line out of action through lightning damage, the router completely dead &c &c, so I'm still trying to sort things out.) Is there a Dorico default for this situation (the chromatic unison, that is)?

Dorico does seem to be able to do all three Gardner Reed versions, though the cherry stem version is slightly graphically different and doesn't seem to offer any options for altering that look.

this was a very quick mock-up of the example posted above:

Not keen on the third Gardner Reed because it resembles the old practice of canceling a double flat or sharp. Never seen the second Gardner Reed, except when the rest of the music is also double-stemmed, but it also seems problematic to me. The first Gardner Reed with two angled stems or the alternate with one angled stem are most commonly seen and OK. Chopin's solution is the most elegant. But it may not work in all cases, when it doesn't, I suggest a bracket: