Calling on the expertise of those of you with extensive knowledge of 20th century notation experiments, etc. I’ve looked for examples of composers that may have come up with a system for a single note (untied) representation of a full bar of compound triple (let’s say 9/8 for ease of discussion) and I don’t see anything. I first thought Cowell would have tried something—and maybe he did. I’ve seen examples in which composers have used a single dotted-half to represent a full measure, or a dotted whole. But I’m wondering if there’s ANY effective alternative that’s been tried.
I’m not needing an answer for any specific piece right now. Rather, I’ve frequently wondered about creative approaches to this issue, and I hate both a) the clutter of tying two notes to show a full measure duration and, especially, b) the way the traditional 2+1 tied note seems to imply a different relative importance of beat 3.
While there is currently no way I know of to indicate a full measure in a single note in many irregular time signatures, keep in mind that it’s useful to use the tied notes to indicate the beat pattern for an ensemble. A 5/8 conducted in two has two possible beat patterns, and using tied notes helps the player understand the groupings for keeping time with the ensemble. It gets more complicated the more you add; i.e., 7/8 has three different possible groupings, and 9/8 has five, but 11/8 has eight. Without doing the math further, I’m going to go ahead and assume a fibonacci sequence.
Yes, I am well aware of how beat grouping works. But that’s not my question. I’m wondering specifically about compound triple meter and whole measure values. Sure, it’s possible to show groupings other than 3+3+3, but how does showing 6+3 help define three beats in 9/8? It doesn’t. It’s simply a placeholder for a long note for which we have no other single-duration value in our system. I don’t think anyone would advocate for writing whole-measure notes in 4/4 as two tied half notes or four tied quarters to clarify that the measure is not divided into 3+3+2.
Don’t mean to sound snarky, but I’m just not looking for a lesson in basic meter concepts. I think it was covered somewhere along the way before I completed my Ph.D.
I get that. It was more for others reading this than you, but I did sort of answer your question in my first line. I don’t believe it’s possible, and I know of no one who has devised such a scheme yet. I invite you to do so, because, while it has importance to you, I don’t believe it does to the majority of composers. It’s one of those “nice to have” things we can easily survive without.
Composers have long desired a “whole measure note” just as we have a “whole measure rest.” And some have simply used the whole note (Examples by Beethoven and Ravel:)
And this is where things get complicated for the engraver: how to get Dorico to accept a whole for the entire 12/8 measure…
On the menu: documentation and paracetamol
Whether one might use a whole note or a dotted whole note in 9/8 seems like a similar issue to the recent thread about expanding vs contracting tuplets.
Yeah, Cowell has a bunch of proposals in “New Musical Resources,” but they never caught on. I didn’t see one for that exactly but for some others check pages 85-89 here:
Emmanuel Ghent had a proposal for a note that’s 5 beats long:
The very name “whole note” is surely based on the assumption that it’s a complete bar of 4/4, anyway. (A quarter note in a bar of 3/4 seems odd to me; but I digress…)
As long as you only used a whole note for a bar’s note, and not for a 4-beat note (as is done with rests), then you should be fine.
