NOTATIO

A further complication is that one must take context into account to interpret all musical symbols, even the exact pitch of the notes themselves. This explains why, as David Ward points out, ten. can mean something different in an Italian opera and a Beethoven sonata, or as Anders Hedelin points out...

The quarter (semiminima) rest started as a reversed eighth (fusa) rest in white mensural notation, didn’t it? So it would be interesting to know when the form was first used. ...which illustrates once again why someone needs to write a book showing the evolution of every aspect of the notational sy...

As a result of which, I'm now having to research the origins of that form of rest.... You may find that the quarter rest has as many variations as the treble clef, maybe even more. I have always found it to be the most difficult musical symbol to draw by hand so that it looks like an engraved symbo...

If you let the Shenker-inspired structure-supporting notes be as important as the expressively important notes, and claim that there is just a 'skin-deep' difference between melody and accompaniment you empty the words 'melody' and 'accompaniment' of meaning. And how are we then to discuss, and und...

Just a thought: Especially the right-hand slurs of the MS (copy?) are very suggestive in that they seem to begin, not on the first eighth, but on the the first rest, or even before that - and in that they do not end conveniently at the expected 'phrase joints'. Chopin overran most of his slurs, beg...

Gould mentions that it is up to the composer to assign meaning to these different lines, so there appears to be no consensus. Alternatively, a straight line might mean exact repetition, a curved line might mean varied repetition, and and a dashed line might mean intermittent repetition.

If you put it all on one staff, the right hand would have the stems up and the left hand stems down and the position of the trill symbols would be as you show them in your example. No rests would be necessary or desirable. If you feel that it shows the melodic connection better to stem it as shown o...

That works, and is better than putting it all on one staff, but I would prefer a standard tremolo indication, which might make it clearer that you want each group to end with the auxiliary and not with the principal tone, if that is indeed what you want. Pianists have to make a judgement call about ...

Much better to do it like the first example. Only use octave signs when the notes would otherwise involve many ledger lines, especially in the lower staff.

The team are doing a marvellous job of producing a product that is functional within limits, and then they continually expand the circle of its feature set. Critics say "oh, it can't do this, and it can't do that; and you had to pay for v2's additions": but it's had three significant upda...