Re: Variable length bars (Phil Holmes)

[Knute Snortum]

I am working on Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition and in the last movement he specifically changes from cut time to 2/2.  I am not sure of the significance of this, but there it is.  (The 2/2 section has a lot of half note triplets.) 

Knute Snortum

(via Gmail)

On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 5:44 AM, Andrew A. Cashner <address@hidden> wrote:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Phil Holmes" <address@hidden>
To: "Patrick or Cynthia Karl" <address@hidden>, <address@hidden>
Cc: 
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2014 08:45:46 +0100
Subject: Re: Variable length bars
----- Original Message ----- From: "Patrick or Cynthia Karl" <address@hidden>
To: <address@hidden>
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2014 10:53 PM
Subject: Variable length bars

I'm trying to set a John Dowland piece (Come Ye Heavy States of Night) which has a single initial time signature of "4/2 2/2" followed by measures that are either 4 half-note beats or 2 half-note beats long, in quasi-random fashion.

It's clear that if I can get that time signature printed, I can set the piece by appropriate use of \set Timing.measureLength.

Can anyone point me to a way to do that?

Thanks

I'm sure someone else can show how to put two time sigs, one after the other, but it may be worth noting that this is not true to the original. Dowland set it as mensural 4/4 time, with 2/2 in the lute tablature.  See http://imslp.org/wiki/The_Second_Book_of_Songes_(Dowland,_John) for the original score.

--
Phil Holmes

With respect and collegiality, I just wanted to clarify that Dowland's original time signatures are C and "cut C": these mensural time signatures only look like modern 4/4 or 2/2, but they are not the same. The C generally means that each tactus or metrical group is made up of two minims (modern half notes), and the cut C means that each tactus is made up of two semibreves (modern whole notes). But in this case I think the C meter just means, "the pulse moves in minims"--it does not indicate a regular grouping of beats the way a modern meter does. Downand's bar lines, it seems to me, indicate musical and poetic phrases, not a metrical pattern. 

I know there are wide disagreement about this, but in transcribing for modern performers, I think one should render the original into basic modern notation--that is, notation that will not surprise modern performers--while doing the least violence to the original. I don't think you gain any advantage in a piece like this from having mixed meters, and certainly not from having two simultaneous meters.

In this case, I would recommend transcribing the piece in 4/2, with perhaps an odd 2/2 bar where necessary. Even if this means that a phrase ends in the middle of a bar, I think you can trust modern performers to recognize that and not automatically put a strong downbeat on the first beat of every bar.  If you think about how the piece should sound, sensitive performers will probably produce similar results regardless of where you put the bar lines.

Best,

Andrew Cashner

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