Re: Beam positions and time signature spacing

[Urs Liska]

Am 11.11.2013 14:12, schrieb Janek Warchoł:

Another example: for centuries, it was the standard in vocal music to
only beam together notes that are part of a melisma.  Now, there was
some reason behind it - to make clear what was a melisma and what
wasn't - but that practice was nevertheless a bad idea.  Now it is
becoming common practice to beam vocal music the same as instrumental
music, and indicate melismas using slurs (i've sung from both kinds of
scores and i have to say that the old practice can make it *very*
inconvenient to read rhythms.  New practice is simply better; Gould
also supports this new practice).

In 19th century song notation (e.g. look at all old Peters editions of Schubert/Schumann etc. songs) slurs were used to indicate melismas - but they were usually used _in combination_ with beams.
I have come to _very much_ disagree to this _very common_ practice. Apart from being redundant this is "evil" because I have to tell virtually any singer (of any level) that these slurs do _not_ have any articulatory meaning. It's very hard to convince them on the intellectual level and even harder making them _really_ ignore them.

Urs