Hi All,
I’ve set “no cautionary” in basically all the possible settings in notation options. But why does Dorico add a natural symbol on the C5 and a sharp on the C#4 on the fourth eight note in this bar? Is it a bug or a setting somewhere I don’t know that set this behavior as a rule? Just wondering.
I’d suggest that it’s the better notation, as any other combination would be ambiguous.
But you can always hide the 2nd C#, if you want.
This is a contradictory accidental, not a cautionary accidental. Dorico doesn’t provide a means of suppressing it automatically, and I would strongly encourage you to follow suit and leave it there.
And given the style and genre, it might be better turn the cautionary accidentals back on.
Thank you for all the advises! I usually trust Dorico to do the right decisions, especially on some area that I am not so sure. Just my church committee asked to remove those because of their understanding of accidental rules. I want to properly explain why we should keep these accidentals. Is there any material that I can refer to?
Thank you!
It’s definitely because of the C-natural in the same location, one octave higher. If you have a C-sharp and a C-natural at the same time, you need both accidentals so that they’re not interpreted as all sharps or all naturals.
You could think of it as a cautionary accidental of sorts, but a “vertical” caution; it’s qualitatively different from the scenarios in Notation Options, which address “horizontal” cautions.
As noted above, there’s no provision for suppressing in this case because of the qualitative difference. Maybe it could in the future, but I wouldn’t recommend using it even if it did.
As for explaining it, I would explain, as @dspreadbury did, that contradictory accidentals at the same time must all be shown, regardless of cautionary considerations. Vertical, not horizontal.
