OT: Baerenreiter edition created in MuseScore

[Anders Hedelin]

I think we can agree on that, RMK.

[Vaughan]

I feel the need to enter into this discussion as I’ve been involved in the project of publishing Leonhardt’s transcriptions for harpsichord of solo violin and cello works by Bach. The editor, Siebe Henstra, is a colleague and an old friend, and Leonhardt’s family chose him to prepare this edition and chose me to advise him because of our close contact with Gustav Leonhardt.

These transcriptions were the only scores Leonhardt agreed to have published posthumously and it’s important to realise that they were originally intended solely for his own personal use. In preparing a modern edition, there were many considerations, among which being the extent to which one should modernise or ‘correct’ Leonhardt’s notation. We decided, for example, to avoid the Baroque practice of notating homophonic passages polyphonically, e.g. splitting chords into separate voices, each with its own stem.

Another important realisation when perusing these transcriptions, as well as when reading modern scores of early music, is that Baroque composers didn’t necessarily feel the need to ensure that all note values always added up strictly mathematically. This is especially noticeable in passages with augmentation dots. Dotted eighths, for example, are often followed by three 16ths or even three 32nds, and no Baroque composer or performer would ever have questioned or criticised the notational accuracy of this practice.

Getting down to the examples placed here, I will admit that there is a note missing in the example posted by John Ruggero: there should indeed be an a’ starting the group of 64ths. This is the corrected version:

correction 2.png (37.65 KiB) Viewed 10211 times

It’s important to note that the original violin version posted by John Ruggero doesn’t follow Bach’s original, but instead follows the later editions which feel the need to ‘correct’ Bach’s notation. Here is Bach’s original. The last beat actually has nine 32nds instead of eight:

original.png (223.91 KiB) Viewed 10211 times

Take a look at the different modern attempts to correct this. Here’s the 19th century Bach Gesellschaft edition which solves the ‘problem’ by changing the final two notes to 128th notes (as does the correction above) as well as by shortening the length of the trilled note:

bach gesellschaft.png (81.94 KiB) Viewed 10211 times

[Vaughan]

Several editions remove one of the notes (the c’’ before the trill). Here’s the French Léonard edition:

léonard.png (67.55 KiB) Viewed 10211 times

Here’s the Schirmer edition which even introduces a triplet:

schirmer 1900.png (77.03 KiB) Viewed 10211 times

With the exception of the Bärenreiter transcription edition, none of these modern editions seems to understand the need for the c’’ with the trill being longer than the notes around it. Bach clearly gives it a longer note value and this is ignored by the modern editions in their attempts to make the measure mathematically correct. Again, no Baroque musician would have had a problem with Bach’s original notation.

In the other example which was posted by Anders Hedelin, the Bärenreiter edition of the transcriptions follows Leonhardt’s original which does indeed notate the first beat in a way which isn’t strictly correct mathematically: the augmentation dot adds an extra 32nd to the first beat. Again, no Baroque performer would have had a problem with this. Ironically, the second beat in Anders Hedelin’s example contains another of these modern ‘corrections’. Here is Bach’s original which clearly notates the values after the dot as 32nds and not 64ths:

original 2.png (198.06 KiB) Viewed 10211 times

These are only a few of the many problems we face when making modern editions of early music: which notational conventions do we follow and which do we modernise for the sake of those who don't understand early notation? There are many examples of this, like performing dotted notes as triplets, or overdotting, but that goes beyond the scope of this discussion.

[zuill]

My original objection to the look was purely aesthetic, not regarding the philosophy of rhythmic integrity in Baroque notation and common practice. I found the overall curb appeal less than stunning. There were inconsistencies in augmentation dot placement, which I gather may have been constrained by the manuscript being engraved. Tie start and end inconsistencies, as well as stem length, beam angle, etc. all add up to a less than pleasing look. When I look for an edition to use as a study or performance document, I often am able to forgive some editorial quirkiness for eye appeal. There are so many publishing styles, and each has its strengths and weaknesses. That's what makes this whole business interesting. I'm sure my engraving rubs some people the wrong way. No one way is "best".

The look of this edition just doesn't do it for me. If this was the only edition of the work, which it might be, then I would be stuck. If I am looking for editions of the Bach Inventions, then I have many from which to choose.

Zuill

[motet]

Vaughan, why was MuseScore chose to do this, since it has obvious deficiencies?

[John Ruggero]

The examples posted by Vaughan are actually by a copyist, one Emanuel Leberecht Gottschalck according to IMSLP and are not Bach's original autograph. Here are the examples from the autograph. Both are mathematically correct, if one accepts that the final 128th beam got squashed up against the 64th beam, as most editions do, since ending with a 128th note pair happens over and over in the piece and the 128ths are very clear in the Gottschalk copy.

Bach 1.jpeg (45.55 KiB) Viewed 10188 times

Bach 2.jpeg (23.76 KiB) Viewed 10188 times

There was no reason for Leonhardt to change the notes or the rhythm in either case, especially since the dotting only obscures the notation. It was just casual notation for his own use. For this reason, I would highly recommend that his arrangements be brought into conformity with the Bach's autograph in all appropriate ways. Certainly Leonhardt would have done that for publication.

[Anders Hedelin]

Thanks, both John and Vaughan for very interesting posts! By the way, I think I used the same source as John did for the violin solo, which I thought was Bach's autograph. So, anyway, the 'correction' was not mine. As I know next to nothing about sources from this time, I can't say much more.

[Anders Hedelin]

As for the beams in the Baerenreiter file, they are miles apart from Bach's extremely elegant and expressive beams, closely following the melodic line:

Bach beams 1.JPG (15.85 KiB) Viewed 10168 times

The Baerenreiter arrangement has the blatantly unexpressive or 'cowardly' beams that you also get automatically in Finale, unfortunately:

Bach arr beams 1.JPG (22.65 KiB) Viewed 10168 times

I had an idea to make a feature request about allowing curved beams. (Just kidding.)

Also at the follwing spot (the first quarter) in the arrangement, the beam of the middle voice is not only not elegant nor expressive, it's downright ugly:

Bach arr beams 2.JPG (16.68 KiB) Viewed 10168 times

The beam angle doesn't even give the three first 32nds equally long stems, it also has a very Unbachian 'cowardly' slope.

[Peter Thomsen]

… I had an idea to make a feature request about allowing curved beams. (Just kidding.) …

No need to be kidding.

Read these two discussions where Finale power user Wess shows how to do curved beams in Finale.
As you can read in the posts, also power user Peter West has done curved beams:

https://forum.makemusic.com/default.aspx?f=6&m=371620

https://forum.makemusic.com/default.aspx?f=6&m=380474

[Anders Hedelin]

Thanks Peter, that's amazing!
Well, not kidding then:
It would take some work to do a Bach composition with curved beams this way! If you can use quarter notes only in the workaround (described in the link), for a start you would need quite a few rather advanced tuplets for the different note values Bach insists on. (To align them vertically.)
To me, beams generally constitute one of the biggest aesthetic problems of engraved vs. hand-copied music.

[John Ruggero]

And I thought that I was the only one who wants or needs to do curved beams occasionally! Here how this un-poweruser has done it:

Curved Beams.jpg (18.4 KiB) Viewed 10130 times

I look forward to checking out the Wess and West methods later today! Wess has helped me in so many ways.

[Anders Hedelin]

Great, how did you make that?

[John Ruggero]

Glad you like it, Anders. It's a straight beam between the first two notes with a smart line joining the second, third and fourth notes. The join isn't too obvious, is it? but now that I let the cat out of the bag…

Since I always use Bach's beaming with the up and down stems, there are sometimes problems with patterns that reverse direction, and I have no recourse but to use the curved beams. The idea of doing Bach's music entirely with the curved beams is intriguing. It would have been very difficult and costly to do this with hand engraving, but computer software could do it so easily (well, maybe).

[Anders Hedelin]

Thanks for sharing, John. If i understood you right, you have kept the default straight beam for the first two eights, but did you then hide it for the last two - how?

Maybe I have seen curved, or at least angled beams in som older prints (I'm not quite sure).

The more I think about it though, the more I find the straight beams of standard engraving unnatural and ugly. Isn't that just a concession to old-times limited, rather clumsy printing techniques? Maybe now, with the help of software, we can make the revolution - the revolution back to aesthetics.

[John Ruggero]

I hid the unwanted beam with the JW Change plug-in. Using the smart line isn't perfect because the ends of the line are perpendicular to the curve and not parallel to the note stems. So I am definitely looking forward to exploring the other options.

You might look through some of the first editions of Bach's music (Klavierübung 1-4) at IMSLP to how those early engravers handled his beams.

To me, the curved beams look particularly good for Bach's music, but I prefer clean, straight beams for everything else. Later composers used mostly straight beams in their manuscripts, with some exceptions that might be handed with curved beams.

I am complete agreement with your philosophy of a "revolution back to aesthetics" as opposed to what I am seeing now from publishers like Baerenreiter.

[Knut]

The more I think about it though, the more I find the straight beams of standard engraving unnatural and ugly. Isn't that just a concession to old-times limited, rather clumsy printing techniques? Maybe now, with the help of software, we can make the revolution - the revolution back to aesthetics.

I can certainly see the aesthetic beauty in the curved beams from manuscripts of centuries past, and I do agree that in terms of expressiveness, those beams are much more comprehensive. The problem is that music notation is supposed to convey a large amount of information and needs to do so as clearly as possible, requiring a minimum amount of effort from the reader. With this in mind, I find that the modern straight beams work in a similar way to serifs in body text; they guide the eye along in the right direction without providing a lot of extra visual stimuli. As such, they provide a certain calmness (depending on the maximum slant, of course) and framing to the music which makes it easier for the eye to follow along. This is especially important in polyphonic music, where the level of complexity in melodic and rhythmic information is relatively great. To me at least, a page of baroque manuscript is much harder to read than a modern one, partly because of the beams.

[John Ruggero]

Knut makes a very good point. That famous opening page of the first solo violin sonata with all the highly dramatic swirling beams may give a wrong general impression. In looking over Bach's Inventions and the unaccompanied violin works, most of the beams are straight. Bach seems to have made his stems of a constant length and then joined the endpoints with beams in such a way as to avoid making some stems much longer than others and the whole taking up too much space on the page, space being quite limited on his pre-lined paper. This lead toward the curving of some beams for melodic patterns that have a bowed shape.

So I guess that I am content to doing what I have always done in engraving Bach: curved beams only when piecing straight beams together is the only alternative.

[Anders Hedelin]

I hid the unwanted beam with the JW Change plug-in. Using the smart line isn't perfect because the ends of the line are perpendicular to the curve and not parallel to the note stems.

Thanks for the tip. I wouldn't have found it out myself.

[Anders Hedelin]

You might look through some of the first editions of Bach's music (Klavierübung 1-4) at IMSLP to how those early engravers handled his beams.
...
I am complete agreement with your philosophy of a "revolution back to aesthetics" as opposed to what I am seeing now from publishers like Baerenreiter.

I found the first edition of the Partitas in Klavier-Übung (Leipzig 1731) on IMSLP. I have to admit I was a bit taken aback. Maybe the "revolution back to aesthetics" needn't go that far back.

[Anders Hedelin]

The more I think about it though, the more I find the straight beams of standard engraving unnatural and ugly. Isn't that just a concession to old-times limited, rather clumsy printing techniques? Maybe now, with the help of software, we can make the revolution - the revolution back to aesthetics.

I can certainly see the aesthetic beauty in the curved beams from manuscripts of centuries past, and I do agree that in terms of expressiveness, those beams are much more comprehensive. The problem is that music notation is supposed to convey a large amount of information and needs to do so as clearly as possible, requiring a minimum amount of effort from the reader. With this in mind, I find that the modern straight beams work in a similar way to serifs in body text; they guide the eye along in the right direction without providing a lot of extra visual stimuli. As such, they provide a certain calmness (depending on the maximum slant, of course) and framing to the music which makes it easier for the eye to follow along. This is especially important in polyphonic music, where the level of complexity in melodic and rhythmic information is relatively great. To me at least, a page of baroque manuscript is much harder to read than a modern one, partly because of the beams.

Thanks Knut for taking these tentative ideas of mine so seriously! I must say that I found your comparison with serif fonts quite convincing. Also, I think you are right about the likeliness that curved beams could create disorder in polyphonic, complex music.

There may also be another problem with curved beams: that they would conflict with the unavoidable straight beams. Whether that conflict is aesthetic, perceptual or habitual, I'm not quite sure. Maybe, one day I will make an experiment with curved beams, just out of curiosity.

[Knut]

Thanks Knut for taking these tentative ideas of mine so seriously! I must say that I found your comparison with serif fonts quite convincing. Also, I think you are right about the likeliness that curved beams could create disorder in polyphonic, complex music.

You're welcome, Anders, and I'm glad you found my arguments compelling.

There may also be another problem with curved beams: that they would conflict with the unavoidable straight beams. Whether that conflict is aesthetic, perceptual or habitual, I'm not quite sure. Maybe, one day I will make an experiment with curved beams, just out of curiosity.

Excellent point! You can see the same conflict in scores with flat slurs, whenever these are perfectly flat (which they never should be and most often aren't in plate engraved scores). As to whether this disturbs aesthetic, perceptual or habitual sensibilities, I'd say all of the above, at least potentially.

I should clarify that I'm not a proponent of curved beams in the cases that John mentions above, which unfortunately would require me to disregard some of the cross beams in Bach's music when re-notating it on the computer. The only other way around this is to use a thinner beam, which can be just as distracting and aesthetically unpleasant.

[MikeHalloran]

Most notation apps promise, at some point, beautiful sheet music... For a couple, that's the only promise that they make.

I prefer mine to be easy to read.

[Knut]

Most notation apps promise, at some point, beautiful sheet music... For a couple, that's the only promise that they make.

I prefer mine to be easy to read.

It doesn't have to be one or the other. Indeed, more often than not, the two are interconnected.

[Anders Hedelin]

Exactly. And then we all have different preferences, Mike
Which is closely related to freedom of choice, if that's of any interest.

[John Ruggero]

I should clarify that I'm not a proponent of curved beams in the cases that John mentions above, which unfortunately would require me to disregard some of the cross beams in Bach's music when re-notating it on the computer. The only other way around this is to use a thinner beam, which can be just as distracting and aesthetically unpleasant.

That is indeed the problem. Since I can't disregard the original beaming, I must use all means available, including thin and curved beams. I myself don't find the result displeasing, just different. In doing my very authentic edition of the Bach inventions and Sinfonias many years ago, I was concerned about readability, since the edition is aimed at students. But experience has laid worry to rest: no student has ever had a reading problem and hopefully all have benefited from seeing Bach's music exactly as he wrote it.