D-sharp major with its 9 sharps goes beyond the limit even of most pianists! A few bars with only 3 flats (and a lot of accidentals!) is infinitely preferable.
Well, I don’t agree that this is harder to read than the original.
Even Bach wrote chords of Fb major and E# major, when they made harmonic sense.
Would you want to write the dominant chord in G# minor as Eb major instead of D# major, to make it easier to read?
Just for the hell of it I tried out some different combinations of enharmonisations and I take back my previous remark. In this particular example, D♯ major isn’t at all hard to read although it does feel different from E♭.
The first version is what Dorico does by default. The second is how Beethoven notated it but without the unnecessary ♮♭ combinations. The third has a slightly earlier clean and consistent modulation to E♭. The fourth has no modulation to E♭ at all and actually requires far fewer accidentals. Anyone care to vote? 
P.S. I used the Academico font to type in the accidentals in this post. Does anyone know why the natural and the flat are allotted so much horizontal space and the sharp isn’t?
You might have used Academico to type those accidentals, but the forum most certainly isn’t using Academico to display them. I’m pretty sure it’s using Lucida Grande for the text; if the accidentals don’t exist in Lucida Grande then they’ll have been substituted in from another font somehow.
Of course, I should have known. I checked in Lucida Grande and it didn’t indeed look as though there are any accidentals included in the font, at least, not in my installed version. So I wonder where they’re coming from and what the reason is for the difference in width. Perhaps because the # is a common symbol…
then you run into the question of sections bitonality which is common in my own music and many others who write in a relatively conventional style. My latest piece ends largely in C minor but the double bass in clearly in D# minor. Despite the three flats key signature, Dorico has correctly identified the key for this instrument and uses only sharps and double sharps. It looks daft but is surely correct. I guess this is one example of the dilemma that many of us can face and we’re discussing here – legibility v musical accuracy. I’m assuming here that Dorico analyses the specific instrument line and does not try to evaluate the prevailing “majority” key from all instruments used at the time?
What about a preference setting “prefer legibility”?
1 Like
To complete the loop, I guess we ought to look at the first occurrence of this in the movement, in D major, where Beethoven’s spelling is logical and readable (including the enharmonic A# - Bb change in the diminished 7th chord).
The harmony at the cadence changes from ii V I to IV V I, just to complicate an exact transposition.
I hope nobody would think of rewriting the B chord in the first occurrence as Cb to match the second one 
This might not be a fair comparison but sometimes respelling music to make it ‘more legible’ is like writing ‘nite’ instead of ‘night’ just because it’s easier to read (and is, after all, the way we’ve pronounced it for the last couple of hundred years). If one understands the harmonic function of the music, it’s not hard to read double flats or double sharps. In fact, a simplification often looks wrong and confusing. Of course, there are plenty of instances in which this doesn’t apply or doesn’t matter.
Nice examples, Rob! Diminished chords are a great way of modulating in all directions.
I can’t resist posting this example from music theorist Richard Cohn’s 1996 article in Music Analysis, “Maximally Smooth Cycles, Hexatonic Systems, and the Analysis of Late-Romantic Triadic Progressions”. A terrific article that tackles enharmonic craziness head-on. (And Rob - thanks for the wonderful examples from Beethoven’s Hammerklavier - that is probably my favorite slow movement.)
I find this notation quite ambiguous. It’s ambiguous whether the final note in bar 2 is D natural or flat (since the upper octave is flat). This is based on an ambiguity whether accidentals apply to all octaves or not. Even though Gould and Wikipedia state that an accidental applies only to the octave it’s written on, there are still plenty of people who question that, based on the fact that this has not always universally been the case (e.g. older music or jazz as I understand it often considers an accidental to apply to all octaves). Questions = ambiguity. Easy to solve by explicit accidentals courtesy or otherwise.
Therefore it would be clearer if there were another natural (perhaps in parentheses) on the final note of bar 2. same with bar 4.
Yes, adrien, I agree that a courtesy accidental on the last notes in bar 2 and 4 would make the intent clear. And certainly preferable to introducing an Ebb in either bar, imho.
John.
Great discussion here, from a while ago mind you, but I love all the ideas and perspectives.
I, as well, find it absolutely bizarre that as I’m composing in the diminished scale, I get a plethora of double flats.
It seems like the point of view, defending Dorico choice of double-flat usage, misses the forrest for the trees. But that’s just my take. As a performer as well, I’d have to agree with Bollen, that seeing the double flat is just a big-wtf no-no. And as a composer, I’d have to agree with Messiaen who wrote probably more music in the diminished scale than anyone, and I can’t find many double accidentals. In fact as I skim through the quartet for the end of time score, I can’t see any.
Anyway, it’s all perspective I guess. There’s no right answer.
Anyway, thanks Daniel for the answer. ( I was about to start a new topic, but searched and found this first. Was nice to read)
If anyone is still interested in talking about this, (not the dorico aspect, as that’s been solved, but the theoretical), as a die-hard theory nerd and composer, I’d love to hear what and why you would find the need to put one in your score. I mean, from an artistic intention, or conceptual point of view. That I find super interesting.
From a performance point of view, I think it’s absolutely ridiculous. 
Guy Lacour has a famous set of 28 Etudes “sur les modes à transpositions limitées d’Olivier Messiaen” and there’s not a double sharp or double flat in the entire book. He freely swaps enharmonic spellings in all 3 of the “Mode II” (diminished) etudes, but never resorts to double accidentals.
1 Like
For atonal music Dorico 4 has a number of new options for spelling, in the Note Input Options dialog.
1 Like
exactly. Yeah I know those wonderful etudes. I used to read through them on guitar as practice warm-ups. Thanks for reminding me Fred. Haven’t looked at those in ages!
That’s what I’m sort of curious about from the voices on this thread. Everyone sounds cool with their perspectives, and am curious to hear personal reasons why they would use. I never do. That’s why Im lighting this discussion up again. Because if there’s a nice reason to use a new tool, I’m always excited to change my ways. Jonny Greenwood uses some, but very few, in Popcorn Superhet Receiver, but that is a microtonal white noise piece exclusively for strings, and it’s easy to understand the intent of why you might use in that context. But I don’t see many in my score reading.
Fred, do you have those Guy Lacour studies? I don’t anymore. Take a look at one of the etudes in Mode 3, which is 2 semi tones, and a tone. I would feel that if there was any double accidentals, they would be in that mode. Is there?
1 Like
Yep, I’ve got it. There are 4 transpositions in Mode III, and there’s one double sharp. (I was wrong earlier when I said there were none, in any case there are very few) Here are two pages of it:
thanks for that Fred, Ha, I just took a guess about mode 3, because I write in it a lot, and that’s the one place my inuition told me there might be one.
But I think this Etude illustrates the point even more. Because it shows that Lacour is not adverse to using double accidentals. This example says to me that he just finds it very rare, even when writing in a mode of limited transposition, that he would ever need to use one.
But of course this is the eternal dilemma with AI. Dorico choses the double accidentals because they are ‘correct’, but hardly any of the people and scores that have shaped music over the last 500 years, employ them.
1 Like