Another couple examples from Peter Maxwell Davies (“Eight Songs…”) – this time, with a variable synchronism inside groups playing with a very free rhythm:
Wowsers - what does the second one mean?
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Don’t write music while intoxicated.
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The figure extends to many other staves over the ones reported. Each stem is just a note starting at that position. I’ll replace it with the full example (I think it is legit to quote a short excerpt).
Hemingway would have said: “do write it intoxicated, but engrave it sober.”
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Legend says that while engraving, contemplate one’s life, only to go into a deep, Mariana’s Trench type of depression. Finish the engraving and never become intoxicated again.
All notation forums have instances where notation we dislike is derided whenever software “n” is incapable of dealing with it. This does not advance things. Penderecki, Schafer and others use this notation, and while there are some disadvantages to it, it is used often and should still be regarded as serious. In this case, the notation of the first example is indeed possible, but is time consuming and also won’t appear in parts (unless the “player” in question is added to part layouts).
What is needed is a single player hold all instruments and have instrument changes turned off in layout properties. That way, cross-staffing can be used. On has to create a player holding all instruments, write a chord with all the notes at the bottom and repeat it as required, cross staff, the top notes to the top instrument, the second note to the second instrument, etc … (filters help), go to engrave mode and select all notes except for the first one and click hide notehead in the Properties panel. If rest are added, they may have to be written with force duration and the extra rests then hidden. Also, some engraving adjustments may be done manually. If individual players are also part of the score (violin 1, violin 2 etc …), that multi-instrument player can be hidden until required, and can also be added to parts so that can see the “full score” when the notation is used. Again, staves can be hidden as necessary. It’s time consuming, but it works! I can share the score if you’d like.
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Thanks, now it’s comprehensible!
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A few thoughts and questions:
@Paolo_T: did your original solution of using vertical lines as stems have any disadvantage of getting “messed up” with spacing changes, etc., or did they “stick” very accurately once you placed them?
@klafkid’s / @jgkzdl’s solution seems pretty technically ingenious to me, guaranteeing that the stems are inherent in the notes, but I see the wisdom in Paolo’s follow-up regarding how badly that would ruin Dorico’s magic vis-à-vis all of the other collision-related behavior.
Now I’m trying to put it all together with @claude_g_lapalme’s post alongside Paolo’s response to @Mark_Johnson regarding score/part relationship, and I’ve got a few questions:
Claude, I was trying it out per your instructions, but I’m having trouble understanding. I’ve tried three methods using a single player holding three instruments:
- 3-note chord entered and copied to all three staves; stem manually lengthen in Engrave Mode (à la @klafkid/@jgkzdl), notes and ledger lines hidden in Engrave Mode
- 3-note chord entered in lowest staff only; N cross-staff to upper two staves; (some) rests hidden
- 3-note chord entered and copied (is that what you meant by “repeated”, or did you mean continuing to enter other chords following later?) to all three staves; N cross-staff to upper two staves, which obviously doesn’t work due to the collisions/duplications
Method 2 seems to get the best results, but then I’m unclear why any notes/ledger liners would have to be hidden. What am I missing? I’d be really curious to see the score, Claude.
I’m not sure I’ll ever be personally inclined to write such a score, but I admire the ingenuity of the solutions, and I’ll bookmark this thread just in case. (And from the looks of the process required, I’d only want to use it in a short piece! 
)
It’s obviously quite a bit of work! If allowing a more “native” solution in Dorico is technically feasible, I imagine they’ll have already noted this for consideration for future inclusion as an option while they prioritize development efforts.
I still see the main advantage of this notation as saving a hand-copyist having to make dozens of short lines at various angles and weights in favor of fewer, longer ones all the same weight and vertical. Like anything, done enough, it soon becomes a style and gets emulated and taught and passed down.
I don’t suppose there are any published, computer-engraved examples yet?
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Method 2 is what I explained. You don’t have to hide noteheads, of course, but one example showed repeated chord where only the first note showed noteheads. What you did is absolutely correct
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On a more notation-philosophy note (since we just love to debate here 
):
This thread was going along nicely, with technical suggestions that would assist @Paolo_T in achieving the results he wants (and more added later as well).
When, about 1/3 of the way down, the questioners stepped in, (Caution — this is a lengthy one, folks!)…
…they did so in two camps. The pragmatists like @Mark_Johnson approached the matter thoughtfully and with respect, raising significant and legitimate issues concerning clarity of musical idea, legibility, and preparation/rehearsal efficiency.
The “notation police” went in a different direction, though — and here I’ll be very “direct” — asking the rather pugilistic “why would you write it that way…?!?!” kinds of questions and even resorting to ad hominum sorts of arguments about composers wanting to set themselves up as gods (!) just for notating unusually.
That’s a shame.
I’ll turn it back around and say that the question “why would you write it that way?” is indeed an excellent one if (only only if) it’s asked with genuine curiosity and aesthetic generosity. Penderecki’s no ignorant fool — the man was clearly intentional. So…”why?”
This is really the crux of the matter. Given the centuries-long tradition of Augenmusik, composers have obviously been moved with some frequency to render scores that went beyond being purely instructions for performance. It’s really just an extrapolation (admittedly a rather big one) of any kind of beyond-simple-clarity decisions engravers make to enhance the visual attractiveness of a score or part.
When Beethoven in Op. 81a asks the pianist to “crescendo” during a held whole note, it’s obviously not a performable thing he’s asking, and I expect that it requires a bit of “preliminary time to decipher.”
One comes to realize that it’s intended to set the performer in a special kind of psychological relationship to the music and invites them to approach the following quarter note (notated, incidentally, with no dynamic indication! 
) in some way differently than otherwise. (How much any listener will “feel” of that has long puzzled me. Perhaps in live performance the player can “emote” physically…?)
It’s obviously one heckuva long way from Beethoven’s cresc. to Penderecki’s stems, but they’re on a spectrum of related practice. I suspect composers whose use cross-staff stemming have similar intentions for the conductor’s psychological relationship to the piece.
It is unarguably true that the social forces and economics surrounding especially large-ensemble rehearsal and performance place severe limits here in the U.S. So naturally when a harried conductor — already functioning in a culture that keeps newer concert music at a distance, and with limited time to prepare — faces the additional challenge of unusual notation to be learned it could be off-putting. (In some cases, though, it might be helpful. I find that Maxwell Davies’ shared stems in Eight Songs… actually makes it easier to read and make sense of the rhythmic alignment, especially given that it’s a cutaway score.)
But…does anyone really think that just because Boosey & Hawkes engraves Elliott Carter’s A Symphony of Three Orchestras with normal stems, conductors will have an easy time of reading and learning the piece? (A bit more readable on the surface, sure, but it’s still going to require so much study that any difference will likely be negated in the margins.) Or that if only Penderecki’s Magnificat were notated without the cross-staff stems regional organizations across the land would be lining up to perform it?
I fully understand and appreciate the practical matters of legibility in rehearsal (and for the record, I’ve never used cross-staff stems, so I have no personally professional “skin in the game”), though, and I do think that those like @Mark_Johnson who raise them thoughtfully are to be listened to carefully.
Perhaps there’s a compromise: composers could prepare both an “Ideal/Study” version and a “Performance” version (which from a practical standpoint would have to be prepared anyway to make part formatting work) of the score. Conductors studying it ahead of time could consult the “Ideal” one to more fully understand what the composer intends, then use the “performance” version on the podium in rehearsal/concert to facilitate reading under those reading conditions…?
I’ve been to the Asheville Art Museum (NC) several times, and enjoyed encountering John Cage’s music displayed as visual art. Perhaps there are pages from some of the scores of other composers that could/should also be displayed and appreciated as visual art…
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Ah — now I understand, thanks!