Notation Of Syncopation

[Joseph Abate]

Which is more correct, measure 1 or 2??

[Adrian Allan]

It's also interesting in some early scores how the practice of different voices has not yet developed, so in some guitar and piano music, you're left guessing how long to hold onto some notes and there is no distinction made between the melody line and the middle voices.

I must admit that the beaming of quavers and semiquavers has been one change for the better.

Has anyone noticed on Beethoven's scores his habit of using very short note lengths at a very slow tempo - eg sixteenths and thirty-seconds, instead of doubling the tempo and using quarter notes and eighth notes, as seems the logical practice for slow music?

[Johan Halmén]

Sammy Nestico puts it very clear. For syncopations, use ties only from beat 2 to beat 3. This works both in 4/4 and 3/4.

[Spiros Makris]

I'd read the 2nd one more easily, if that;s what you're asking.

[Spiros Makris]

The practice was to not change the time values to reflect the tempo, but rather notate with a standard set of values and use a lower tempo. So a presto and largo will use the same values, only largo will be 50-60 and presto 150+ (or something around that). this makes everything look uniform, which benefits the player (or at least, I feel it helps me), and since largo or adante is quite slow, he can freely use small values to express more complex rythms and analyse the melodies and themes. Plus, runs don't really look nice if they are not 16ths :P

This is the practice of Beethoven in most slow parts of the sonatas, and you can verify it works in a similar way with the chopin nocturnes (usually)-another set of slow piano pieces.

Adrian Allan said:

It's also interesting in some early scores how the practice of different voices has not yet developed, so in some guitar and piano music, you're left guessing how long to hold onto some notes and there is no distinction made between the melody line and the middle voices.

I must admit that the beaming of quavers and semiquavers has been one change for the better.

Has anyone noticed on Beethoven's scores his habit of using very short note lengths at a very slow tempo - eg sixteenths and thirty-seconds, instead of doubling the tempo and using quarter notes and eighth notes, as seems the logical practice for slow music?

[Bob Porter]

Neither.

Dotted quarter , quarter, quarter, eighth. If I wanted it to look the simplest.

Although I would probably write the first one in my notation software, because it doesn't need to look simple.

The question of how early composers notated this is interesting. Did Beethoven prepare his scores for printing or did someone at the printing house interpret the scores? I seem to recall from hazy music history classes that there were some questions sometimes. I recall some composers scribbled reductions and let others write out transcriptions.

[Spiros Makris]

grabbing an urtext edition would solve many questions.

But my guess is he used the 2nd, with the corrections you made. I do not recall anything like the first in any piano scores I've looked. Perhaps it can be found in the later sonatas?

Anyway, the first just looks like an overanalysed way to say the same thing.

[Fredrick zinos]

Note only in LVB but also in Haydn, Mozart, Stamitz, all of the "classical" symphonists and even back to Bach, and Monteverdi. 
Adrian Allan said:

It's also interesting in some early scores how the practice of different voices has not yet developed, so in some guitar and piano music, you're left guessing how long to hold onto some notes and there is no distinction made between the melody line and the middle voices.

I must admit that the beaming of quavers and semiquavers has been one change for the better.

Has anyone noticed on Beethoven's scores his habit of using very short note lengths at a very slow tempo - eg sixteenths and thirty-seconds, instead of doubling the tempo and using quarter notes and eighth notes, as seems the logical practice for slow music?

[Gordon Francis Blaney Jr.]

#2 over #1:

To tie or not tie tends to be a mathematical and musical question begging to be answered. I, however, shall make an effort to generalize the topic of tying. A tie should be used for clarification: over-clarification, however, is not good but bad as it makes the reader's job/career a complex and difficult one.

How can simplification be better rather worse than over-clarification? If we notate, making each macro-beat visible, we're overloading the mind with too much visual clutter: If we notate, making all terms in a measure simplified, we're overloading the mind with too much too much non-visual clutter. We must balance between being simplified and over-simplified: In the example we're given to analyze --- it might be summed as placing three versus one imaginary bar line(s), yet for bars 3 and greater, an imaginary bar line(s) should be present for clarity, in my humble opinion.