Dear pianists, what do you prefer?

Charles Ives’ VARIATIONS ON AMERICA has a short transitional section which is in two different keys (maybe three, with the pedal? Don’t remember…). It is REALLY hard to wrap my brain around that We tend to thing one key signature as whole, then adjust each hand (and feet) for the accidentals. Trying to remember which hand is in which key is really difficult - much easier to deal with the accidentals. And personally, I don’t mind sharps and flats in the different hands (separate notated) if it avoids a whole bunch of double-sharps (or flats). From what you’re describing, I’m thinking no key signature would be the most clear to read.

I see I’m in the minority. If each hand is more or less tonal in its own key, I’d rather not see a lot of accidentals. Accidentals should be a cue that the tonality is being altered. I’d much rather two key signatures.

If you’re able to think in Db and B major at the same time, then I tip my hat to you (I am not being sarcastic). I most certainly cannot, no matter how squarely the notes are rooted in either key. On the one hand, I’m sympathetic to your argument… it’s easier to digest each part without a ton of accidentals. I always look at Schoenberg & Berg’s scores and shudder (not the least of which is because of how they sound lol). In this case, I consider the situation akin to when composers renotate Fb chords as E or Cb as B even though it’s not “technically correct”… but it’s a heckova lot easier to read in the moment!

Fun fact: Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern were all fans of Viennese operettas. They made several arrangements of Strauss, Lehar, etc, for slightly weird chamber groups (e.g. string quartet plus piano and harmonium) for performance in their own concerts.

I once heard a few of those performed - and if you didn’t know they were by “atonal composers” you would never have guessed.

Schoenberg was a full-blown romantic before he whiplashed to atonal. Some of his early symphonic works are stunning and sound like Mahler. BBC Proms: Arnold Schoenberg: Gurrelieder – excerpt - YouTube

A 19th-century journalist is said to have quipped, “Wagner’s music is really much better than it sounds.” :wink: Pretty much applies to the Second Viennese School as well, IMO.

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I’m at least consistent. I hate non-correct spelling. When I was more of a trumpet player, being in Gb but knowing the piece was in E screwed me up…

Dan, I’m almost the opposite. I don’t find much intellectual resonance with serial techniques, but I love how a lot of it sounds.

I seem to remember playing some Bartók’s Mikrokosmos pieces (when I was learning piano) with two different key signatures (one for each hand) and, while very basic, with a little practice, it did not take too long before muscle memory kicked in.
I’m just wondering if it is (financially or time-wise) possible to produce two layouts or publications, whichever two you think are best. Then a player can simply choose which one they prefer. Thinking about offering the choice, it would depend on the pianist, experience, preference, practice time, or simply needing to sight-read it, so two to choose from might be a nice gesture, given its complexity.

The problem with a certain sub-class of serial compositions is that it is easy to forget why the technique was invented in the first place and produce something which looks like music and has an impressively complicated theoretical structure, without ever bothering about what it sounds like.

IMHO people should be banned from composing using tone rows at all until they can sing one correctly at sight :slight_smile: (Actually the same criterion ought to apply to composing anything - it’s not meant to discriminate against atonalists!)

As there has been much discussion on the addition of fingerings and other indications in the score on this forum, I occasionally produce two versions of my score: one with just the plain notes, and another with a few editorial markings, should the performer like to have them. That way there is a clean copy if they don’t. It obviously depends on the scope of the project, but for smaller works, (and with the marvelous flexibility of flows and the ability to duplicate them in two clicks) this type of thing is ultimately easy to achieve.

To contextualize to this thread: I imagine that entering all the notes into a score without key signature that shows all the necessary accidentals, then duplicating the flow and adding independent key signatures for each hand (which would automatically update which accidentals were displayed) wouldn’t take much effort at all.

I don’t know if I could be bothered… :smiley: That would be a lot of extra work…

Unfortunately no… Because tonal rules of writing and atonal ones are different. you would rarely if ever use an A# on F, Bb, etc, but if you have a piece which is say D minor against F#minor and you write it without key signatures you might have many A# depending on the context of the music. In fact, in the piece that initiated this post (G# minor against Eb minor) I had to rewrite one staff completely to make it easier to read. Of course Dorico offers many tools that facilitate this (although I could really use a simple respell shortcut), but you still need to change the majority manually.