I agree that it should be available, though I’d never use it. If Dorico were to make it an option, I think it’d be important not to be selected in Dorico’s defaults. Many program defaults tend to become an accepted norm, witness many a score online out there produced using many of Finale’s poor default settings.
Len, quite right. I was merely echoing Vaughan’s sentiment. Although, truth be told, I find limited value in reproducing old-style scores, even when imitating the original. No one publishes Bach’s organ works with tenor/alto clefs anymore, and the old conventions for cross-stave beaming have been abandoned too. This, to me, falls into the same category of, “cute, but quaint”. That said, I don’t advocate depriving anyone of the ability to produce it for their various reasons, I just hope that as a universal convention it declines.
Dear L3B,
I agree! Taditional Lyrics Beaming is a very useful tool - as a Plug-in - in Sibelius. All beaming made in a second!
While you (other guys in the tread) have thrown “rotten tomatoes” on each other I have
- Used the Taditional Lyrics Beaming Plug-in in Sibelius.
- Made a condensed mxl-file export.
- Imported the mxl-file in Dorico. Voilà!
I’m a happy man.
Taditional Lyrics Beaming - yes - a must also in Dorico!
Beaming to lyrics is also available as an option in Finale.
Interesting thread which, predictably, I’ve arrived at four years too late.
In the majority of the books I have with songs from the first half of the 20th century - most of which of which are Broadway/Hollywood songs - there is no beaming on the vocal line. I personally started learning notation from the examples set in these books so, right or wrong, I’ve been taking this as the norm. This aspect of non-beaming doesn’t just hold true for Songbooks (Kern, Arlen etc.) but also for Musical Vocal Scores, in many ways a step in notation above the Songbooks. However, it is interesting that the one Vocal Score I take as the Gold Standard (“Carousel”) rejects this convention and has beaming on the vocal lines.
I’m not a student of notation history so I’m probably wrong about this but I’ve always thought that this style of non-beaming was the result of the semi-quaver (let alone even shorter notes) just not being that common in the vocal line of these type of songs. Songs which fuelled a huge expansion in sheet music sales. Of course they do occur, but I’ve just opened up a few books at random and honestly, not that common. As a fair number of the songs are in swingtime - I’ve no idea when that form of notation was introduced - it’s almost as if they had an aversion to sixteenth notes!
Anyway, It’s visually easy to distinguish whole, half, quarter and eighth notes from each other and I would argue that these notes fall fair and square into Gould’s description of “the simplest rhythms”. Where it get tricky is when you add in the sixteenth notes (as Gould’s example does). I have scores where sixteenths are beamed and eighths left unbeamed but equally I’ve scores where a rule of no beaming on the vocal line is strictly adhered to, including sixteenths.
One other difference I notice: these scores are fairly liberal with their width - fewer bars per staff. As that results in the spacing between notes being that much more evident, this again makes it easy to read if there is no beaming.
Personally, I think beamed sixteenths are a must on a vocal line, and I wince at lines of unbeamed eighths skipping onto the same or neighbouring tones, but fortunately they don’t occur that often - so I let it ride. On the other hand, I also wince at beamed eighths on the vocal line (although much less so in modern setting - modern fonts etc,). I suspect that is because I’ve come to view the vocal line as being different. It has a certain personality.
I t would be useful if Dorico could provide the means to have vocal lines unbeamed (with the manual aspect being reserved for melismas) but, as others have already said on here, unbeaming the vocal line can be already done manually so in no way is it remotely approaching a priority…
Just my 2p.
Obviously it is subjective, but in Baroque music (only!) I strongly advocate retaining lyric beaming, because slurs are usually used not for melisma but for technical/expression indications, and because the presence of unbeamed 8th or 16th notes can instantly draw attention to the character of the passage. For instance, this bit from Handel’s Ezio (Chrysander’s edition):
Also, in languages like Italian where multiple vowels/words can be elided onto a single note, lyric beaming can clarify the intent, or conversely show ambiguity, the resolution of which is, in my opinion, more the province of the performer than the editor. (This is why I prefer nonbreaking spaces to underties in lyric input, as well.)
In general, I don’t think the horizontal spacing of lyrics is sufficient in enough cases to justify modernizing the beaming in this rep, and I’m not comfortable adding melismatic slurs that might bias a performer toward a particular interpretation. Lyric beaming also makes the vocal line that much more prominent on the page, and since they’re often the soloist, I see that as a plus.
(Modern music is another story, and in my own stuff I’m more than comfortable using rhythmic beaming and superimposing phrasing and melismatic slurs.)
I dispute that ‘slurs are usually not for melisma’. I do a lot of transcribing of Baroque manuscripts, and I see slurs used for melismas all over the place. In fact, that’s the major use of slurs in vocal lines. But of course they use them on larger notes values that can’t be beamed.
As you can see beautifully in this example, the main purpose of non-beaming was because the lyrics were put down with no regard for their position under each note. So the beaming was your only clue.
And when it comes to the crotchets in the next bar, which can’t be beamed, they use slurs. I’ve even seen identical passages in two different metres: one with short notes beamed, one with longer notes slurred, in exactly the same way.
I see this over and over again, to the extent that you can’t really argue that the slurs indicate some other kind of expression. These slurs tend to be for two or three notes only, so are clearly not an over-arching phrase. Here’s another example:
So the answer to the question “Would a Baroque performer understand slurs used to indicate melismas on beamed notes?” is “Yes.”
And now that we can position lyric syllables more precisely under the note, the need for lyric beaming is reduced, and can be eliminated entirely with (editorially indicated) short slurs of this kind.
You can argue that the edition is therefore losing information that is present in the source. Well, perhaps; or is it just ‘displaying it differently’ (which is what an edition does)? I have a friend who believes that inconsistent beaming in string parts indicates bowing. But that’s another story…
It’s also fair to say that use of printing presses prevented slurs from being introduced in published music for a good long while. I’d suppose that this was more a limitation of the printing technology then and affect that was actually desired.
FWIW, I’ve been engraving some XVII c vocal french music lately, and my commissioner (who is specialist in that repertoire) specifically made me copy exactly the way beams, slurs and so on were on the source, because it matters. Although a professional singer for 20 years, I’ve never sung this repertoire so I did not know. Now I do!
This is, in fact, exactly the exception I had in mind when I used “usually” as my weasel word, and I am certainly not suggesting slurs from the source should be removed. (I also do near-daily transcribing of Baroque vocal manuscripts, not to mention I sing this stuff professionally.)
You’re right that my wording is misleading, because the slur usage over notes that can’t be beamed is indeed the most usual usage. In retrospect I should have not assumed this was obvious.
To clarify what I meant, and acknowledging that generalizations are dangerous, in manuscripts:
- Melisma is usually not indicated with slurs, but with beaming.
- Slurs are used when beams are not possible.
- Slurs are infrequently found in places where they are not necessary to indicate a melisma, and in those cases may be considered to be phrasing or technique indications.
- Inconsistencies abound in manuscript and how much an editor “smoothes them out” is a matter of judgment, intent, and also available time—is this a published or academic urtext edition? an in-house performing edition? an edition meant to introduce this rep to young or non-specialist musicians?
My personal opinion is that more is lost than is gained by modernizing syllabic beaming, though I know of other specialists who have the opposite opinion. As I said at the outset, ultimately it is subjective but I do know that in my specialist world, preserving as much as is possible in the manuscript is often appreciated.
(I’ve had the same suspicion as your friend regarding string beaming, by the way. There are places where the beaming changes seem highly suggestive of bowing or at least phrasing, but as a singer rather than a string player I am certainly not confident enough in that to change to a modern system of rhythmic beaming plus slurs.)
Yes, the French stuff is notoriously precise! (And precisely imprecise at times too.)
I do think people feel a lot more comfortable modernizing e.g. Italian opera manuscripts from the time period, maybe because the composer was often churning it out at an alarming rate, and inconsistencies might be attributed to haste rather than artistic intent. I personally think that does the composer an injustice, but of course it has its merits.
In my core area (17C/18C string music) it is copyist/publisher errors that dominate (evidenced by differences between editions). It is very hard to ascertain “composer’s intent” when no original manuscript exists, and no authoritative evidence that the composer was even aware of its publication, let alone ever proof-read it.