Re: Tie placement in voiceTwo

[David Kastrup]

Please keep replies on the list.

Rutger Hofman <address@hidden> writes:

> On 09/01/2013 10:21 AM, David Kastrup wrote:
>
>> Given the nature of ties, ties in parallel with beams are not very
>> frequent.
>>
>> The example you give does not seem like something where one would
>> ordinarily employ ties.
>>
>
> Are slurs better then?

It's not a question of "better".  The meaning of a tie is "the note is
continued".  A tie is _notational_ instruction.  Its message is "for
lack of a better notation for the length of this note, we write a tie".

In the example you gave, there _was_ no lack of a better notation, so
using a tie would have been decidedly strange.  "Lack of a better
notation" can mean that the note length as such has no proper
representation, or that using a single note would cause the note to
extend across a rhythmical border (such as a bar line) one does not want
to cross without warning the reader.

Renaissance music does not use such "syncopic" ties, baroque music uses
them pretty much only across bar lines.  Jazz uses them pretty much for
anything crossing a beat boundary without filling the whole starting
beat.

Now slurs are _not_ a notational tool, but one indicating execution of
_two_ notes.  For bowed instruments, they usually indicate passages
without bow direction change.  For any instrument, it usually indicates
not stopping the first note before starting the second one.

A slur on identical pitches on single-course instruments is rarely used
except by "analogy": if I have a phrase constituted of pairs of slurred
notes of generally different pitch, and there is a single pair of equal
pitch, I want this pair to sound similar in character.  On a
single-manual keyboard, one would likely use two different fingers for
striking the same key.  On a string instrument, one would usually use
two _different_ strings for the two slurred notes.

The J.S.Bach Partita 3 for Solo violin (BWV1006 I think), first movement
(preludio) has a lot of those slurred notes on the same pitch, and also
some quite nice three-string passages pointed out by beaming/stemming
the notes appropriately.

Now if your example were to indicate such an execution on a stringed
instrument, one would usually have the first note and second note
attached to _different_ beams.

The note grouping you demonstrated  _would_ make sense in an "analogy"
passage where one has something like
c( e) c( e) d( e) d( e) e( e) e( e) f( e) f( e) ...
but then one would most certainly use slurs, not ties.  Ties would
suggest an execution where the second note is not sounded separately at
all, breaking the character.

-- 
David Kastrup