Re: Notation convention: dotted notes, duplet or else?

[David Kastrup]

Kieren MacMillan <address@hidden> writes:

> Hi David,
>
>> Like with poetry, if you have to use means of forcing the meter to
>> the performer, and if the
>> performer has to take explicit means to force the meter to the
>> listeners, one might suspect that the content to be conveyed might have
>> benefitted from a better fit of the message/medium.
>
> Again, your "binary" approach misses the point: Every poet uses "means
> of forcing the meter to the performer", including end-stopping,
> punctuation, changing metrical feet, etc. And the great poets use more
> force.

In the notation?  Hardly.  If you have stuff from a reasonably good
poet, you can usually word-wrap it without noticeable structural damage.
In fact, you might seriously improve the auditory delivery of bad poetry
performers by doing so because it might keep them from slapping the
audience in the face with the line endings.

>> Printing a meter change for hemioles is like indicating the exact
>> placement for canned laughter in a comedy script, perhaps by marking
>> out sentence parts as "funny" and "not funny".
>
> We are in total agreement on that.
> What you seem to be incapable of appreciating is that not every duple
> and/or dotted rhythm is a hemiola in disguise.

If you find a single sentence in this thread where I have not explicitly
been talking about hemiolas, you might have a point.

>> a composer is hoping to elicit precise effects, he should not make
>> his music available except to ensembles he is conducting himself.  I
>> know someone who did it like that and his widow is still keeping the
>> scores pretty tightly under wrap.
>
> Wow — you sure know a lot of people who make extreme choices.

A lot?  Hardly.  But the others don't make for much storytelling.

-- 
David Kastrup