Center line stemming

[Fred G. Unn]

There was a long discussion the past couple of days on the Dorico forum about Dorico's center line stemming practices. No need to rehash it, and Daniel said they would address it, but I just wanted to confirm what most publisher's expectations are with this.

Ignoring the beam angle (I was using default settings, Ross says straddle/straddle for E/G), which of these 3 would you say uses "correct" modern stemming practices as a reputable publisher would expect?

A)


B)


C)


My own feeling is that only A is correct. While allowable by Gould, B is seems quite dated to me. The Boosey style guide even says "The note on the middle line of a stave should have the stem down even in vocal music. Only change this practice under extreme duress." Ross and Stone both say that while the middle line used to be neutral, "now a down-stem is always appropriate." The first tuplet in C just seems definitively wrong to me. Am I correct that A is the only stemming that most publishing houses would accept here?

[John Ruggero]

For the record, Arnstein lived by the "stem down for the middle line" rule, probably because it was accepted by all the various publishers he worked for. But that was back in the day. Gould's more flexible approach is perhaps more current.

Since I don't have to worry about what other publishers prefer, I stem by the phrase like the top staff of B and lower staff of C. And rather than it being dated or "incorrect", it could be in the vanguard, because one sees this now in the Wiener Urtext editions, for one.

[Fred G. Unn]

For the record, Arnstein lived by the "stem down for the middle line" rule, probably because it was accepted by all the various publishers he worked for. But that was back in the day. Gould's more flexible approach is perhaps more current.

Since I don't have to worry about what other publishers prefer, I stem by the phrase like the top staff of B and lower staff of C. And rather than it being dated or "incorrect", it could be in the vanguard, because one sees this now in the Wiener Urtext editions, for one.

Interesting! The only support I could find for Gould's approach in other engraving books were ones that were over 100 years old.

Music Notation and Terminology, Karl W. Gehrkens, 1914, pg 1


System in Musical Notation, H. Elliot Button, 1919, pg 18


Pretty much everyone else said stems-down, or at best something like Read (pg 64) saying while it “may go in either direction … the more common practice is to draw it down.” Some hand copying books were more neutral, but there haven't been many hand copying books written in the last 30 years so I don't know how current their advice is. The bottom staff of C I could see being used in a series, but as a standalone bar looks strange to me anyway. My eye ends up doing a double-take to make sure I have my staff positioning correct. All the style guides by various publishers that I can say stems down for that treble B, unless you count Gould as basically the Faber style guide.

John, you preferred the bass staff of C because of the continuation of beaming direction, right? I'm assuming you wouldn't want that center line beaming if the other tuplet had another stem direction like this. This one looks even more odd to me:

[benwiggy]

This is a quote that I often pull out:

"We have heard it said that when the noteheads are above the third line, the stems are turned down, and when below the third line, the steps are turned up; also that when notes are on the third line, the stems are turned up if the stem of the following note is up, or down if the next note is down. But really such rules cannot be consistently followed."

William Gamble, Music Engraving and Printing, 1923

[Fred G. Unn]

William Gamble, Music Engraving and Printing, 1923

Oh, I have that one too but didn't see this when I was skimming through. The index only lists 2 entries for Stems, and neither page has that quote. Just found it on pg 188 though. It's still almost 100 years ago. The trend seems like this was more flexible back then, then seemed to harden into the down only style by the time of Read, Ross, and Stone. Certainly the Schirmer (2009) and Boosey (2010) style guides are definitely down only. Perhaps with Gould (2011) this is becoming more accepted again.

Virtually all the notation books I have in that 50 year gap between Gamble and Ross are hand copying, history, or avant-garde books. Are there any other good notation books from that gap dealing with notation rules and guidelines? I suppose simply looking at scores from this period is the easiest way to tell.

[benwiggy]

I've just made sure that my defaults are those recommended by Vaughan, and with Daniel's threshold adjustments, and that does work well.

[John Ruggero]

John, you preferred the bass staff of C because of the continuation of beaming direction, right? I'm assuming you wouldn't want that center line beaming if the other tuplet had another stem direction like this. This one looks even more odd to me:

Stemming by the phrase depends on context and the amount of music in the examples is too small for much of a context. I would do that one all up stems if the two groups were part of a single phrase. But in an actual piece of music, the first triplet could be ending one phrase and the second beginning another, in which case the up and down stems in the example might be fine.

I have given numerous examples from Chopin and Beethoven in previous threads on this site regarding the very logical and expressive use of stem direction by those composers that is far from arbitrary rules like the ones being discussed now.