Re: Rounded beams

[Andrew Bernard]

Hi David,

There is an extensive tradition in 18c of curved beams engraved on copper, and we are here talking about engraving, not just printing. Sharon posted some lovely images. So engravers of the period delighted in it – and were no doubt trying to look like handwriting, not printing – the other way round to where the aesthetic focus seems to be now. As a specialist in Couperin myself, I would love to have the beautiful curved beams we see. They do serve a purpose apart from looks – it is well known amongst musicians who play from such facsimiles that they carry a sense of the movement of the line, and have great expressivity. Not exact prescriptive directions such as modern people seem to want, but an emotion and a feeling of direction and phrase. Of course, these 18c beams often taper at the ends as well, first an artefact of the pen or graver, but also an indication of the breath and life in the beamed group. Many subtleties and nuances were crushed by the age of industrialisation. I look forward to the distant future when we can program such fluidity, nuance, and beauty with software tools.

As an aside on contemporary typography, the font catalogs are literally flooded with handwriting fonts nowadays, some of the more advanced of which have dozens of stylistic alternative glyphs so you can print really good looking, highly variable, uneven and delightful texts with a handwritten appearance. Judging by the sheer number of these fonts and the number of professional type designers who devote sincere effort to making this style, there is a desire in people to overcome the stiff rigidity of the typical printed letterform.

And let’s not forget that the Humanist class of fonts, still actively developed today, were based on the desire to produce the characteristics of a fine formal hand, with its warmth of feeling, in print. To quote from wikipedia:

Humanist, humanistic, or humanes include the first Roman typefaces created during the 15th century by Venetian printers, such as Nicolas Jenson (hence another name for these, Venetian). These typefaces sought to imitate the formal hands found in the humanistic (renaissance) manuscripts of the time. These typefaces, rather round in opposition to the gothics of the Middle Ages, are characterized by short and thick bracketed serifs, a slanted cross stroke on the lowercase 'e', ascenders with slanted serifs, and a low contrast between horizontals and verticals. These typefaces are inspired in particular by the Carolingian minuscule, imposed by Charlemagneduring his reign of the Holy Roman Empire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vox-ATypI_classification#Humanist

The handwritten and the printed/engraved have long been closely intertwingled, and still are today.

Andrew

On 17/12/2015, 00:29, "David Kastrup" <address@hidden> wrote:

Andrew Bernard <address@hidden> writes:

Hi Urs,

Imagine, if we had this, the next step would be lovely curving beams

like Bach!

Printing and handwriting are different things with different traditions,

focus, and typography.  If printed beams were supposed to be curved,

they would have been easy to engrave into plates with appropriate rakes.

But it does not appear like that was desired.

--

David Kastrup