Re: Gallery of Interesting Music Notation

[Simon Albrecht]

Am 31.08.2015 um 21:33 schrieb Steve Lacy:
> I found this fascinating:
>
> http://homes.soic.indiana.edu/donbyrd/InterestingMusicNotation.html
>
> I wonder if anyone here (or elsewhere) has tried to engrave some of 
> these, even as musical fragments?  I'm sure it would be an eye-opening 
> process. :)

Perhaps the second Chopin example (op. 15 no. 2, m. 8/9) is the most 
challenging one. I disagree with the analysis given by Mr. Bird, 
although I can’t even quite follow his reasoning why we should play some 
notes (and which?) right-to-left. I would interpret this as a kind of 
arpeggio (an interpretation also displayed in the Klindworth/Scharwenka 
and Scholtz editions – although I’d never go the route of eliminating 
the subtle difference Chopin made in not actually writing a normal 
arpeggio).
An interesting question is the synchronisation with the left hand: 
leaving aside these with arpeggio notation, all of the editions align 
the down-stemmed voice with the bass note on the upbeat; for the 
downbeat this is the case in the Kullak/Parsons, Bargiel and Cortot 
editions, whereas Mikuli and Joseffy align the topmost note with the 
bass. Interestingly, Kullak/Parsons distinctly have the second bass note 
in bar 9 not aligned with the third semiquaver of the highest voice 
either, but somewhat earlier. There it would be really interesting to 
look into the autograph or first editions – maybe I’ll check some 
critical editions (the above is only what could be found on IMSLP, and 
that’s not quite satisfactory, especially with the complex situation 
often seen with Chopin).

Find attached an essay at coding this, along with two ways of 
standardising this notation.
I’m not fully content yet – especially the beams should get a grace-like 
look, but I couldn’t figure out how to do that: one may easily reduce 
the thickness and move it down, but the gap between the beams seems to 
be hard-coded :-(.

Best regards,
Simon

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