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sostenuto pedal markings

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 1:22 am
by lynndavidnewton
What is the usual procedure for adding sostenuto pedal markings to a piano score?

I have a couple of short passages in which the player must catch a note with the sus. Ped and
let the note ring amidst a flurry of shorter notes.

I'm not deeply concerned about having an accurate playback (though it would be nice).
I'm just looking to see if there's maybe a standard symbol (that's not the standard piano
stylized Ped marking) and maybe add a horizontal like to mark the release or something.

Re: sostenuto pedal markings

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 2:11 am
by Michel R E
"sost. ped."

there's no symbol that I know of, only the text.
only be aware that many pianos do not have sost. pedals.

Re: sostenuto pedal markings

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 2:38 am
by lynndavidnewton
Not man pianists who would be playing this piece would be without a sostenuto pedal.

Thank you very much. I'll live with the make-do. I had to make something up when I wrote it 54 years ago, too.

Re: sostenuto pedal markings

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 9:37 am
by David Ward
Elaine Gould says something useful about this on pages 336 and 337 of her book Behind Bars.

Re: sostenuto pedal markings

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 10:57 am
by lynndavidnewton
David Ward wrote:Elaine Gould says something useful about this on pages 336 and 337 of her book Behind Bars.
Thanks. I saw that a couple of days ago as I was looking for something else.
It struck me as surprising. I was hoping that perhaps Finale had a special symbol
or even an articulation with playback.

The piece I'm re-engraving was written when Ms. Gould was in grade school. :-)
(Guessing her age by appearance.)
I've always liked sostenuto pedal and use it myself (I have one on my main piano).

The good news is that the implementation of the solution is simple. Just type
in Sost. Ped. and a horizontal line.

Problem solved. Thank you to responders.

Re: sostenuto pedal markings

Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2018 8:55 am
by elbsound
There is a dedicated "Sost" and "S" symbol in the SMuFL font standard.

Image
(From: https://elbsound.studio/catalog-of-musi ... #sostenuto )
sost.jpg
sost.jpg (153.5 KiB) Viewed 12235 times
For Finale I'd recommend using the implementation in the Aruvarb font:
https://elbsound.studio/elbsound-music- ... finale.php

Re: sostenuto pedal markings

Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2018 9:44 am
by Ere Lievonen
elbsound wrote:There is a dedicated "Sost" and "S" symbol in the SMuFL font standard.

Image
(From: https://elbsound.studio/catalog-of-musi ... #sostenuto )
I think this symbol has been invented by the makers of SMuFL. I've never ever seen it used in any score ...yet, I suppose...!
I have mixed feelings about the symbol...

Re: sostenuto pedal markings

Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2018 3:03 pm
by John Ruggero
Ere Lievonen wrote:I think this symbol has been invented by the makers of SMuFL. I've never ever seen it used in any score ...yet, I suppose...!
I have mixed feelings about the symbol...
I've never seen it either and don't care for it. Ugly. Ped. has at least some tradition behind it; this seems more like a wannabe.

I have seen a small coda sign used to terminate S. P. or Sost. Ped. and prefer that to a bracket.

Re: sostenuto pedal markings

Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2018 9:44 am
by Knut
John Ruggero wrote:
Ere Lievonen wrote:I think this symbol has been invented by the makers of SMuFL. I've never ever seen it used in any score ...yet, I suppose...!
I have mixed feelings about the symbol...
I've never seen it either and don't care for it. Ugly. Ped. has at least some tradition behind it; this seems more like a wannabe.

I have seen a small coda sign used to terminate S. P. or Sost. Ped. and prefer that to a bracket.
Neither have I, but I think the idea is quite good even if the design is flawed.

As Ere points out, this marking was suggested by one of the contributors to SMuFL and agreed upon by the community.

To me, it would be beneficial to have all pedal instructions in the same font style, but it's success would be entirely dependent on cohesive and clear letter designs. Such as it is, in Bravura and it's offshoots, the design of the Sost marking is only a play on the traditional Ped marking, not one totally cohesive subset of the alphabet. This gives the already unfamiliar Sost marking it's slightly faux, 'wannabe' impression that John mentioned.

Re: sostenuto pedal markings

Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2018 11:21 am
by Ere Lievonen
Knut wrote:To me, it would be beneficial to have all pedal instructions in the same font style
No. It is most beneficial that the various pedal instructions are in different font styles, so that they can be visually distinguished as easily as possible. It is very good that the good old Ped. (which is the pedal most often used, anyway) looks very different from all other pedal markings. And the already established convention of Sost. Ped. or S.P. (in a normal text font) is quite adequate. The makers of SMuFL didn't create a new symbol for "una corda" (fortunately!), so I don't quite understand the need for this new "Sost.".

Re: sostenuto pedal markings

Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2018 3:52 pm
by Knut
Ere Lievonen wrote:
Knut wrote:To me, it would be beneficial to have all pedal instructions in the same font style
No. It is most beneficial that the various pedal instructions are in different font styles, so that they can be visually distinguished as easily as possible. It is very good that the good old Ped. (which is the pedal most often used, anyway) looks very different from all other pedal markings. And the already established convention of Sost. Ped. or S.P. (in a normal text font) is quite adequate. The makers of SMuFL didn't create a new symbol for "una corda" (fortunately!), so I don't quite understand the need for this new "Sost.".
In your opinion? :)

No, but seriously, I hear what your saying, Ere, and you're certainly right that Una Corda/Tre Corde should have the same style if one were to follow the pedal font principle. My guess is that there are examples out there of this stylised Sost. mark, or else it would not have wound up in SMuFL in the first place, but there might not be one for Una Corda/Tre Corde as of yet.

To me, your argument seems unnecessarily conservative; I don't believe that this is a real issue once the style has been established. But as regular roman styled text expressions are otherwise virtually non-existent in piano scores, I can see what you're saying.

Re: sostenuto pedal markings

Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2018 4:55 pm
by Michel R E
Knut wrote:But as regular roman styled text expressions are otherwise virtually non-existent in piano scores, I can see what you're saying.
I'm trying to understand this comment. It's quite possible that I'm confusing it somehow.

But in 50 years I have never, ever come across a sost. pedal marking that was anything other than a regular text expression" sost. ped". The only exceptions I've come across have been in some French scores where it was referred to as the "troisièmme pedale".

Re: sostenuto pedal markings

Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2018 5:46 pm
by Knut
Michel R E wrote:
Knut wrote:But as regular roman styled text expressions are otherwise virtually non-existent in piano scores, I can see what you're saying.
I'm trying to understand this comment. It's quite possible that I'm confusing it somehow.

But in 50 years I have never, ever come across a sost. pedal marking that was anything other than a regular text expression" sost. ped". The only exceptions I've come across have been in some French scores where it was referred to as the "troisièmme pedale".
I'm not entirely sure what you don't understand by my comment, but I was only trying to say that except for references to the sostenuto or una corda pedals (and, of course, tempo marks), roman (non-italic) style serif is virtually never used in piano scores. Therefore, I have no problem seeing how keeping to the traditional typographic style would make the regular Ped. mark more distinct, as per Ere's preference. If, OTOH, regular roman style text where used to give a whole host of technical instructions on the piano, as is the case on some other instruments, keeping all pedaling instructions in the same distinct font style would make more sense.

I also said that nor I have ever seen this stylised Sost. mark in practical usage, but that it's inclusion in the SMuFL standard would indicate that it must have been used somewhere, seeing as this is (or is at least supposed to be) a prerequisite for such an inclusion.

I must add though, that seeing as SMuFL includes a whole host of more or less obscure notational symbols, discussions such as these are very valuable for those of us who dabble in music font design. It's quite difficult to get a clear picture of exactly how common or practical every single symbol in the standard actually is and how valuable it would be to include or exclude it. It's also rather easy from our perspective to fall in love with and wanting to include a particular symbol for mostly aesthetic reasons. Apart from creating a lot of unnecessary work for ourselves, we then run the risk of contributing to a 'symbolic inflation' in music.

Bravura is supposed to represent the entire range of symbols suggested by SMuFL, which is fine, but which means that it needs to be used with care. There is, however, no reason why other font designers need to 'pile on', creating the impression that certain very obscure symbols are more commonly used (and therefore more acceptable) than they actually are.

Case in point: I have already seen a number of scores done in Dorico which utilises the particular stylised Sost. mark found in Bravura. This might be because they find it useful in spite of it's obscurity, or because they think it's standard when it actually isn't. Either way, this isn't necessarily a good thing, but I recognise that it would be hard for SMuFL to have any stricter requirements for symbol selection without running the risk of excluding symbols which might be useful in certain situations. Luckily, though, designers of new SMuFL compliant fonts are not required to include any symbol they don't want to.

Re: sostenuto pedal markings

Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2018 6:47 pm
by motet
To this non-pianist,

Sost. (stylized) ... *

seems very clear and analogous to "Ped.", so why not?, especially if the alternative is something more convoluted? "Because Edition Peters [or whoever] never did it" doesn't seem like a good reason.

Re: sostenuto pedal markings

Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2018 9:57 pm
by John Ruggero
I agree with Ere. Given the amount of information that we keyboard players have to take in, it is good that each of the pedal indications has a markedly different appearance. Music notation has evolved the way it has for generally good reasons, even if they are not immediately apparent; and for this reason home-grown solutions in search of problems are perilous.

Re: sostenuto pedal markings

Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 5:15 pm
by Knut
John Ruggero wrote:I agree with Ere. Given the amount of information that we keyboard players have to take in, it is good that each of the pedal indications has a markedly different appearance. Music notation has evolved the way it has for generally good reasons, even if they are not immediately apparent; and for this reason home-grown solutions in search of problems are perilous.
Keep in mind though that only one of the three pedal indications has a markedly different appearance when using the traditional typographic styling; two of them are still similar. Also, quite a few publishers use regular (italic or roman) text for the regular Ped. instruction as well, which provide just as little in terms of distinguishing it from the others.

Re: sostenuto pedal markings

Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 6:17 pm
by John Ruggero
Knut wrote:Keep in mind though that only one of the three pedal indications has a markedly different appearance when using the traditional typographic styling; two of them are still similar. Also, quite a few publishers use regular (italic or roman) text for the regular Ped. instruction as well, which provide just as little in terms of distinguishing it from the others.
S. P. and una corda are to me sufficiently different to be easily distinguished from each other, but the newly advocated sostenuto symbol could be mistaken for a standard ped. mark in the heat of the moment, especially since it is usually used so infrequently.

Publishers who don't use the traditional Ped. font are making an error. One also sees non-traditional, hard-to-read fonts used for fingering symbols. One doesn't see these errors in the piano music of the major publishers. At least, not yet...

Re: sostenuto pedal markings

Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 6:52 pm
by Knut
John Ruggero wrote:One doesn't see these errors in the piano music of the major publishers. At least, not yet...
Except in numerous edition by Henle, Schott, Novello and others.

Re: sostenuto pedal markings

Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2018 10:22 am
by Ere Lievonen
Knut wrote:Keep in mind though that only one of the three pedal indications has a markedly different appearance when using the traditional typographic styling; two of them are still similar.
There is no problem with that. That one of the pedal markings (the main one) is markedly different is exactly what a pianist needs. To distinguish the main one from the other pedal markings is much more important than to distinguish among the other pedal markings, since the others typically occur much less frequently, and, like John says, the difference in text is good enough to distinguish between them. But please, let's not make any of the other pedal markings resemble the main one too much.
Knut wrote:Also, quite a few publishers use regular (italic or roman) text for the regular Ped. instruction as well, which provide just as little in terms of distinguishing it from the others.
If some publishers choose to use sub-optimal types of notation, let's not use that as an excuse to lower our notational standards.

Re: sostenuto pedal markings

Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2018 9:45 pm
by John Ruggero
Knut wrote:Except in numerous edition by Henle, Schott, Novello and others.
Perhaps you are referring to the use of the script-like P instead of Ped that Henle, Wiener Urtext, Schott and others are now using? It seems to be a variant of the traditional font with the same distinctive attributes and has the added advantage of greater precision, being only a single character. Some might consider it to be an improvement, although it is a little less visible. I have never seen a regular text font used by these publishers for sustaining pedal indications.

However, Novello does use a regular text font, which may be a holdover from the earliest days of pedal indications. Judging from historic editions of Chopin, the now traditional "script" Ped. font seems to have entered the picture in the 1840s in Germany. Before then, a regular text font was used in France, Germany and England, and perhaps never fell out of use in Britain.

Re: sostenuto pedal markings

Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2018 11:08 pm
by Knut
No, I'm not speaking of the shorthand P mark.

Henle scores available online are pretty sparse, but here's one as well as a Schott score from the 1860s:
Skjermbilde 2018-01-22 kl. 23.46.18.png
Skjermbilde 2018-01-22 kl. 23.46.18.png (102.68 KiB) Viewed 11927 times
Skjermbilde 2018-01-22 kl. 23.53.22.png
Skjermbilde 2018-01-22 kl. 23.53.22.png (118.52 KiB) Viewed 11927 times

Re: sostenuto pedal markings

Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2018 1:38 am
by Ere Lievonen
About Knut's first image: This is an entirely different marking. In this context, this means "con pedale ad libitum". It would be quite wrong to replace this marking with the script Ped. sign, especially in an Urtext edition. (I bet there is no pedal release star and no new pedal indication in the next measure.) I admit, a non-pianist may not know that this is a different usage.

About Knut's second image: This is from 150 years ago. It doesn't really answer the question, what present-day major publishers would use a Ped. marking in regular font?