I’d welcome any ideas to get Bartók ‘rest pauses’ above a barline (here showing semiquavers and quavers) - a workaround or future request?
I could use commas and fermatas but I assume that Bartók was being accurate here.
Change one of the Breath marks that you’re not using to a quaver rest in the Music Symbols editor.
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Nice one, Ben. I hadn’t thought of that.
I haven’t come across other composers doing this.
However, this is trickier than I thought.
First, only some fermatas restrict themselves o the top staff when over the barline.
Most holds do not have the ‘Attach to barline’ tick box.
I finally used the shorthenzefermata and longhenzefermata thenaltered the symbols to the rests.
And it works!
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Out of interest: the notation just prolongs the bar for an eighth note value, correct? So basically it’s a meter change for one bar?
I think that is correct - and the same for the sixteenth note one.
I’m glad that Bartók didn’t use all note values or I would have run out of music symbols!
It certainly makes the score tidier.
Perhaps there is an implied greater degree of freedom in interpreting the exact length of the pause?
Do you think it is possible that Bartók meant a break of that length without adding time? Is there any other source that can confirm?
Would you tell us what this piece is? I’d like to find out more abut the meaning, aside from how to set it in Dorico.
Interesting from the paper “Articulating Bartók: Interpretation of the Piano Notation” by Victoria Fisher, International Journal of Musicology , 2000, Vol. 9 (2000), pp. 421-437. [Availble on JSTOR].
In his 1908 Bagatelles and Ten Easy Pieces he found it necessary to include a set of rules for accidentals, pedal marks, and his use of a rest above the bar line to denote a pause. He provided no such instructions for subsequent works, either because they had entered the realm of convention, as in the case of accidentals and pedal marks, or because he eventually abandoned their use, as in the case of some unorthodox uses of rests.
It’s Old Hungarian Tune No.16 from ‘For Children’ volume 1 based on Hungarian folk tunes published for solo piano by Boosey & Hawkes.
I assume this is a song and so perhaps the rests imply breath marks of different lengths.
(I arranged the piece for guitar ensemble and feel that to add time to the bars would cause some complications for the players!).
In the same volume No.28 Choral, in a slower tempo, he uses standard fermatas at the end of some phrases as well as full bar rests.
But nowhere else are the shorter marks used in the 2 volumes.
Thanks very much , Andros, for that excerpt from the Articulating Bartók article.
I checked a Russian edition to make sure this was not a Boosey & Hawkes editorial insertion. It’s original Bartok for sure.
Thanks for that one, Andro - almost identical to Boosey except.
Boosey uses 3 systems.
The RH fingering looks a bit odd in the Russian bar 3.
I had never come across this edition before.
Andy
Thanks for that. I asked because, since it’s just one instrument, I would add such a rest as text rather than using the more complex fermata feature.