Re: Dynamic mark at the end of a bar

[David Sumbler]

On Wed, 2015-05-27 at 22:14 +0100, Phil Holmes wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "David Sumbler" <address@hidden>
> 
> > But both of these are "work-arounds" for something which is actually
> > fairly normal musical notation.  They are work-arounds because one
> > method implies that a note is not really the length that it appears to
> > be, and the other method implies that the dynamics actually belong to
> > another, silent voice.  Neither of these is true in reality.
> >
> > Ideally one shouldn't have to use trial and error, varying the length of
> > the second invisible rest, to get an acceptable appearance.  We know
> > exactly where the final dynamic should go: it should be immediately
> > before the bar-line.
> >
> > Perhaps at some stage the Lilypond developers could look at the
> > possibility of having a method of adding a dynamic (or text) for cases
> > like this, so that it is automatically right-aligned to a note or rest.
> > Additionally, if the note or rest comes immediately after a barline,
> > then the dynamic/text should be right-aligned to the barline itself.  I
> > would suggest that a suitable input method would be to use a slash (/)
> > instead of or as well as the usual backslash (\).
> >
> > I am not criticising Lilypond, which is magnificent.  But it does seem
> > unfortunate that at the moment there is no way of directly inputting a
> > perfectly normal, if not particularly common, bit of standard notation.
> 
> 
> I'm sorry, but you've lost me on this.  What, musically, is the difference 
> between a dynamic at the end of a bar, and the same dynamic at the start of 
> the next bar.  As I performer, I can't distinguish.

Well, I suppose that the difference logically and musically is none, if
the note is followed by a rest.  But what if it is followed by another
note?

In the example I gave there was a note lasting for one bar followed by a
one bar rest.  You are suggesting, it seems, that it would be all the
same if the dynamic indicating the level which we want the crescendo to
reach were attached to the rest in the next bar.  In theory you are
correct, but (a) I do not recall ever having seen this notation in the
62 years I have been playing music, and  (b) it is illogical to apply a
dynamic to a silence, although I admit that this objection is somewhat
academic.  However, I think that most performers would think that it
looks wrong and it is therefore possibly a little confusing.

Now consider an instance where, instead of a rest in the 2nd bar, we
have another note which needs to be played in a similar manner to the
first.  In other words, we have 2 (or more) 1-bar notes, each of which
starts at the same level (e.g. piano) and "crescendoes" to forte, say.
Each note needs a separate hairpin, with an 'f' marking at the end and,
with the possible exception of the 1st note, a 'p' marking at the start
of the note.  We would probably also put the word 'subito' or 'sub.'
after the 'p' on the 2nd note.

In this case the 'f' *must* come at the end of one bar and the 'p' at
the start of the next.  Having both at the start of the next bar would
mean something quite different: we would be indicating a 'fp' accent on
the second note.  (And if we put 'fp sub.', not only will it make no
difference but it will cause the performers to wonder what on earth the
composer meant by it.)

In the particular case I was dealing with, there is a time change at the
barline.  Having a time signature increasing the distance between the
end of one bar and the start of the next would have made idiosyncratic
placing of a dynamic at the start of the next bar (which only contains a
whole bar rest) look even more weird than it would otherwise.  And
supposing that there is a line-break, or even a page-break at this
point?  That would look even more peculiar.  In conventional music I
have never seen a dynamic applied to a rest, so far as I can remember.

In any case, this is all rather academic: the convention, in my
experience, is that the destination dynamic in these cases is printed
before the barline.  I don't think anyone would think that notating
music in an unconventional manner because the software makes it easier
to do it that way is a good idea.

David