NOTATIO

At my age I'm quite happy with a bit of symbiosis, when most things in life are rather the opposite of being symbiotic. As for changes or new features in music notation, I think it's easier to tell when an innovation is necessary - because you can't think of an alternative, or better, solution - tha...

Of course modern software opens up for limitless changes of music notation, and it might seem a waste of potentiality not to use it to its full capacity. I think, though, that music notators are a quite conservative/consensus-minded lot, in the sense that they value and preserve a lingua franca whic...

Your comments on this precious piece of music was really inspring, John. Another excerpt from the third movement may make it impossible to believe that Beethoven didn't have Mozart's music in his his mind at the time: Beethoven Op. 106.PNG I would like to ask you, what you make of the unusual notati...

My memory may have played a trick with me, I think the name of the program was "Igor Engraver". Does that ring a bell for anyone?

There was, once, a music-notation program called Stravinsky (which he couldn't have used himself - otherwise than posthumously, that is). Reading the advertisements you got the impression it might very well compete with Finale. I never got round to trying it out myself, and now it seems to have gone...

And if Fin... No, forget that.

Just as an aside, but apropos: Paul Dukas has said one of the best things ever on composing, which became a sort of motto with me when teaching composition: Pour composer il faut savoir beaucoup et faire de la musique avec ce q’on ne sait pas. In my homemade translation: To compose you have to know ...

The analogy between composition and architecture is striking, but there is a difference, though. When building a cathedral, you obviously have to start 'from the inside', with an architectural plan. Composing a work of music may very well start 'from the outside', from motivic germs like in the foll...

Thank you for your idea about the interpretation, John. That convinced me that the B sharp probably is intentional. It is subtle, yes, but with Beethoven nothing, and a lot of things, surprise. What about the second scale, the one with C natural? Do you think it's intended to be played more in one s...

Enharmonic spelling isn't always that facile. You are probably right, John, that in traditional chromaticism the lowered third degree in a major key is more common than the raised second - statistically. On the other hand, as an expressive appoggiatura to the major third degree it's in fact always a...