NOTATIO

A good image. Checking my own very quickly-without-thinking hand-written crotchet rests, they seem to be a Z drawn from the top at 20º from vertical continuing into a C at 0º below. A “Z with a C below” seems pretty close and a very clever way for a young child to remember how to draw the rest.

I agree that ‘noth-ing’ would be totally absurd. It does seem to exist in some on-line & computer hyphenage, but it is not in either the 1933 twelve volume Oxford dictionary or the 1983 two volume one (I've just checked as I have both here), so I don't know the origins of that absurdity, nor of ...

I'll go along with John there. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, the master of rendering an expressive, meaningful text in singing, said that a sounding consonant before a vowel should be intonated at the pitch of the vowel, even if it precedes the new harmony (!). The (sounding) consonant becomes a sort o...

I like them as they are, but don't claim to be an expert in the finer points of engraving.

EDIT: Ideally, shouldn't the and the staccatissimo instruction be closer to the notes than the beat symbols? Maybe that's not practical?

Here is another solution of Crumb. Composers seem to suffer from this note-value. There is undoubtedly a logic to that notation, but unfortunately the usual more complicated way of notating it is what musicians have become used to reading almost by instinct. Anything new has to be questioned and le...

I'm glad you answered John. I was going to suggest the same as you, but much better from an experienced pianist (which I am not).

(I am assuming that this is for piano or at least keyboard of some kind.)

… … … On further thought I don't see any compelling reason why in this instance you should not add legato slurs to groups of syllables. Interestingly, here in Boulez, he indeed uses slurs as the phrasing tool. It looks similar to what I would need. Boulez, Pli Selon Pli 3 This use of two levels of ...

… … …David, could you give me an example of what you're talking about with the single syllable? I'll see if I can find a suitable example if it doesn't involve awkward scanning. The semiquavers - interrupted into two groups - on the first syllable of ‘murdered’ in the Song of the Head about 9'30 in...

Interestingly, I'm sometimes faced with the opposite problem - a sequence of notes on one vowel which would by modern convention be covered by a slur, but which I do not want sung legato. The 19th century vocal beaming is less than ideal for reading rhythms, but does allow slurs to have only their l...

OCTO I'm guessing that you want to show exactly where the the individual legato phrases begin and end? On further thought I don't see any compelling reason why in this instance you should not add legato slurs to groups of syllables. It should be obvious what they are intended to mean, as they were c...