Re: Accidental placement above/below note

[Daniel Johnson]

Ruud van Silfhout wrote:

> As I am just an amateur regarding music notation I have a question
> concening the attached piece of music.
> The natural shown below the last note, is that meant as a natural
> normally placed before the note? And is this an alternative (standard)
> notation for accidentals?  And if so, can this be done by lilypond. I
> know you can of course do this by adding a markup, but I was wondering
> if this could be done using some kind of property of accidentals or
> accidentalplacement. I also think that the accidental is somewhat
> smaller than the normal accidental.
>
> TIA,
> Ruud

This type of "suggested" accidental is usually found in edited editions
of 18th-century or earlier works; the original score did not contain an
accidental, but it is presumed that the performers of those days knew to
perform it as a sharp/flat/whatever.  Therefore editors who want to
indicate their best-guess of performance often use this sort of accidental.

It is also sometimes used in other modern scores when there are many
notes in close physical proximity.  For example, in the published
version of Ralph Vaughan Williams' "In Windsor Forest" (movement 3,
"Falstaff and the Fairies"), the engraver has used a flat over a note in
a soprano-solo melisma of sixteenth-triplets, purely as a matter of
notational convenience.

--Daniel