I love that Dorico has a ton of preferences relating to accidentals. However, despite my setting things up in the notation preferences to hopefully minimize unnecessary cautionary accidentals, a work in progress seems to have some inconsistencies. I can certainly hide some of the accidentals as needed, but that is then on a note-by-note basis and it would be great to not to have to do that. I’ve seen some older posts on similar topics so I’m curious if anything might now be possible to get rid of some of these:
For example, in the first example, why is there a natural on the third note when it was already there in parentheses and why is the second C# spelled out whereas in the next measure it isn’t? To my mind, it should just have a cautionary on the first C-natural and the C# an octave above of course would be spelled out, but that’s it for that measure.
In terms of settings, I have Modernist selected (but have tried Common Practice, which is worse). I have no key signature and specified Atonal. Here are some settings I have for cautionary accidentals:
Hi @dtoub, sorry, I don’t have a direct response to your post, just a couple of personal thoughts:
As a player I would generally say: better to have a cautionary more then one less, especially in atonal music, where you cannot deduce from the harmonic meaning what the composer intended.
Also generally (but this is probably banal) there are two “directions” that make cautionaries helpful/desirable: the horizontal one (voice leading) and the vertical one (harmony), and the player needs both to be as clear as possible.
This is probably because, in the first bar, the LH (on the 4th sixteenth on beat one) has a C natural together with the RH C#, and in the second bar (on the 4th sixteenth on beat one) the LH has an E together with the C#.
Understood. And I certainly have learned to have more rather than fewer cautionaries. But it just seemed inconsistent when applied to similar measures, and if I’ve specified “Show no further cautionary accidentals” when accidentals have already been stated within a single bar, it seemed odd to see them in some measures after initially stating them. Thanks!
The cautionary natural on the first note (in parentheses) is triggered by the “Notes at a different octave in the following bar” option, and the cautionaries on the third and fourth notes are triggered by the “Notes at a different octave within the same bar” option.
However, I think it’s possible that the real problem here is that you’ve made at least some of your changes to the wrong set of options. The screenshots in your initial post show the cautionary options that are listed under the Cautionary Accidentals section. However, as the text at the top of that section says, “These cautionary accidentals options only apply when the common practice accidental duration rule is used …”. The Modernist Options section contains a different set of cautionary options. Is it possible you’ve been looking at the wrong ones?
Odd, because the ones that apply only to the common practice option are greyed out and I couldn’t change them (unless I switched to the Common Practice option, which at one point I did try).
Will try a different configuration and see. Thanks.
Here’s what worked for me: switching to the second viennese school. That ended up hiding some that seemed redundant or inconsistent. new work.dorico (973.1 KB)
I’m now into a new work and have the opposite problem: measures where sometimes cautionary accidentals are automatically produced (appropriately) and others where they do not. I have the same settings as before (Modernist) and have every option for cautionary accidentals set to display either with or without a parenthesis, depending on the situation. But none of these options I’ve chosen should be hiding them. Yet in measure 196, the third staff (all of this is on piano) has a cautionary as appropriate yet 199 does not, etc. The only difference is the rhythm in the first staff, but in all cases, that Eb occurs before the E-natural. Thoughts? File attached. Thanks.
This is indeed the important difference. In b.196 the Eb occurs first, and then then the E natural gets a cautionary, to remind you that it’s different from the Eb. In b.199 the first E natural doesn’t need an accidental, because it’s the first E in the bar and it’s natural. Then the second E natural doesn’t get a cautionary because it’s the exact same pitch (including octave) as the first one - you already know it must be an E natural because you’ve just played it, and if it were anything else it would need an explicit accidental.
OK got it. I just would have thought in 199 the fact that the second e-natural in that bar comes after the Eb in the first staff and would have forced a cautionary accidental. Thanks! This is fine then.
