Re: triplet question

[Thorkil Wolvendans]

Hi Ed & everyone!

At 19:17 24-5-04, you wrote:
> I haven't ever seen, or heard of, triplets going over a bar line (except when
> I got Lilypond to do it on my school assignment by mistake).

I attached an example from the book "Music Notation in the 20th Century" by 
Kurt Stone. It gives a nice example of a quintuplet (okay, it's not a 
triplet, but this was the first example I could find) crossing a bar line, 
taken from Elliot Carter's "Symphony of Three Orchestras".
It was not an uncommon habit for the Post-World War 2 -generation of 
composers to use barline-crossing tuplets. Boulez, Berio, Xenakis, etc. 
used it quite frequently, actually. But I believe even Webern has used them 
in a couple of compositions.

> Changing time signatures is probably what should be done if you are 
> writing music and
> it has gotten to that point.

Maybe, but... what if you want to start a triplet on the second half of the 
last beat and don't want to loose the 4/4 feel?
For instance:

%START EX. 1%
    \notes \relative c'' {
    \time 4/4
    c4 e8 e g4 d | c4 e8 e g4. \times 2/3 { f8 a b} c4. r2
    }
%END EX. 1%

One could change time here to \time 9/8, next bar to \time 7/8 and then 
return to \time 4/4. This certainly shouldn't give any (major) problem if 
it's a solo piece, but I think, if it would be a piece for let's say, 
violin & orchestra, the timeshifting (and most importantly: rythm-shifting) 
would be very confusing for the rest of the ensemble, because (considering 
the fact that we want to keep the 4/4 feel) they have to start on the 
weak-weak-beat of the 9/8-measure, which has to function as a preferenced 
Strong-beat and the actual Strong-beat (the first beat in the 7/8-measure) 
has to function as a Weak-beat again.

I think it's easiest for all parties (soloist and/or ensemble) to use a 
barline-crossing tuplet.
Only, how should one achieve it in Lily? I'd say by faking it, or not?

Regards,
Thorkil