NOTATIO

There was a discussion about placement of the in the measure (centring it), here in Messiaen we have a similar idea: Quite interesting!

Is the excessive shift to the right caused by the repeat-ties? They seem to be present in both images, and although one could argue for how long those ties should be (I think they're fine, but could be shorter), I wonder if the engravers would have placed them at the same position in the bar had there NOT been any repeat-ties...

Some 20th century engravings (especially French) appear to be reproducing the spacing of a composer’s manuscript much more than 19th century engravings ever did. I can’t argue against the clarity in Messiæn scores, but that amount of space for a half note or quarter note does seem wasteful to me.

tisimst wrote:Is the excessive shift to the right caused by the repeat-ties? They seem to be present in both images, and although one could argue for how long those ties should be (I think they're fine), I wonder if the engravers would have placed them at the same position in the bar had there NOT been any repeat-ties...

Very interesting thoughts, I haven't considered that.
The overall spacing is very wide. Interesting, since the German music looks so different from that time (or earlier, for instance Strauss - zip packed.)

OCTO wrote:The overall spacing is very wide.

I agree. The amount of actual space given to those measures seems unnecessary, though perhaps in the greater context it isn't as obviously large.

The space both before and after the notes in the Messiaen example seems excessive to me. However, I think that the old engravers were correct to indent the note and narrow a single note measure.

I now follow the following procedure for handling this situation: I move the note one note-head to the right from its normal position and narrow the measure until the note head approaches the center. However, only in very narrow measures would the note-head be exactly centered, which can appear sterile. A single note in the final measure of a piece might be a case where exact centering is best.

It would be nice to be able to automate this procedure in Finale.

Yes, this is exactly what I’ve been doing in FInale and Sibelius for about 25 years now.

That's very good to know, MJCube. I may pose this as a possible plugin at the MM forum.

I did pose this at the MM Forum, and HaraldS kindly provided an excellent JWLua plugin that will change the single-note indent and measure width for selected measures.

http://forum.makemusic.com/default.aspx?f=6&m=484156

Just curious (as I don’t use Finale for work any more): Does the plugin find candidate measures in the selection too?