NOTATIO

Fred, you have been very forbearing about your thread getting hijacked. Just one more response and I am done:

I wonder how many modern pianists still play the beginning of the 2nd partita in the wrong rhythm (i.e. exactly as it's notated)

Vaughan, A student of mine came back from ******* playing it wrong. When questioned, the student said that it was "controversial," and that he felt that it was so much more expressive as a 16th! Oh, well. The Wiener Urtext almost manages to get to the end of the second section on the second page, but misses by one system and that means the final section is now spread over four pages! 0 for 2 in the good page turn dept.

Fred, for me, bar 4 cries out for space. So while I never thought that I would hear myself say this, I actually prefer the Sibelius "humanistic", with your variation a close 2nd, and Finale a distant 3rd. Both Sibelius versions remind me of the spacing that happens intuitively when copying by hand. Finale looks rigid compared to both, and it is not just bar 4.

If anyone is interested, all I did for the Sib spacing was keep the quarter as the reference width, and then adjust the values so every time the duration doubles, the allotted width increases by 1.618.

Fred G. Unn wrote:If anyone is interested, all I did for the Sib spacing was keep the quarter as the reference width, and then adjust the values so every time the duration doubles, the allotted width increases by 1.618.

This I will share with my Sib friends, who struggle having it properly spaced. THANKS!!
I wonder if there are other settings in Sib that make it look "strange to my eyes"...

John Ruggero wrote:Both Sibelius versions remind me of the spacing that happens intuitively when copying by hand.

I might be wrong, but I suspect that's what they were going for but not using a fixed ratio. Some built in kind of randomness that makes it more humanistic.

John Ruggero wrote:Fred, for me, bar 4 cries out for space. So while I never thought that I would hear myself say this, I actually prefer the Sibelius "humanistic", with your variation a close 2nd, and Finale a distant 3rd. Both Sibelius versions remind me of the spacing that happens intuitively when copying by hand. Finale looks rigid compared to both, and it is not just bar 4.

I have to say I agree with John.
Generally speaking, I find the golden ratio spacing of Finale to leave too little space for the smaller note values (and way too much for the larger ones), compared to my favorite plate engraved scores. I've never ventured into spelling tables in Finale, but setting the scaling factor to the square root of 2 (1.414) gets me much closer to the feel I prefer.

Ok, here's a look at some scaling values I've heard mentioned before. I'm pretty sure we can all agree the values 1 and 2 aren't acceptable options, so everyone's preference must lie somewhere in between.
1.5 to 1.618 look the best to me I think. As mentioned in the original post, Sibelius uses 1.3 to 1.38 with that one 1.7 value as an outlier. I can't remember anymore, but 1.5 might be what SCORE used as a default.

Interesting!
For me it's definitely between 1.414 and 1.5. Kind of a toss-up, but I might prefer 1.5, actually.

Knut wrote:Interesting!
For me it's definitely between 1.414 and 1.5. Kind of a toss-up, but I might prefer 1.5, actually.

I've used 1.618 for over 15 years at this point, but I might prefer 1.5 too. I've always liked the look of SCORE's output, and looking at this I think that might be what it used.

You can use different algorithms in the same file via the note spacing plug-in: