Clef design comparision

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tisimst
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Re: Clef design comparision

Post by tisimst »

Nicely done, Knut! Seeing more of the Menuet font family together in a score helps to visualize the cohesiveness of you designs.
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John Ruggero
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Re: Clef design comparision

Post by John Ruggero »

I'm not sure I entirely understand what you are trying to convey in your last paragraph. Do you mean that we should stop re-engraving the old scores and focus on modern composers? Or do you mean stop emulating the "engravings" and work straight from the composers' manuscripts? Or is it something else entirely? Just trying to understand, not criticizing.
And I am certainly not criticizing you either, tisimst. This is what I meant:

The 19th century Peters edition of the Haydn Piano Sonatas is obsolete, because it does not adhere to the autograph and/or original editions. Performers now expect greater authenticity, so I see no reason to reproduce older editions verbatim today. There may be wrong notes, wrong slurring, wrong dynamics etc. If one wants to consult such an edition for historical reasons or for practical suggestions regarding fingering and interpretation. it is probably available at IMSLP. But this should only be done by those who are aware of the textual problems of older editions. As a teacher, I had to constantly warn my students about the pitfalls of many of the editions available online.

This certainly doesn't prevent the reproduction of the beautiful engraving of older editions, but I feel that the text should be corrected in accordance with original sources. You suggested another possibility: "working directly from the autograph". In my edition of the Bach Inventions and Sinfonias, I attempted exactly that: a very faithful reproduction of the composer's autograph within the bounds of a modern practical edition. It was a very interesting experiment designed to preserve notational elements that are often lost in the engraving process. There is no limit to what can now be done with computer engraving to preserve the intentions of composers present and past
Last edited by John Ruggero on 19 Nov 2015, 02:21, edited 1 time in total.
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John Ruggero
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Re: Clef design comparision

Post by John Ruggero »

Browsing casually through some music this afternoon, I came upon my Holy Grail of treble clefs. It resembles Wess's "old" [edited] Henle clef but improves upon it in certain details. It is from a excellent edition of the Bach Partitas published by Wiener Urtext edition (2004) and is not their usual treble clef, which resembles the new Henle clef.

http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/6-p ... ic/6546644 will give some idea of it, but unfortunately the detail which makes it so special is lost. I would love to post it, but I am concerned about copyright. Does anyone know if my concerns are unjustified? In any case, I am going to use it as the basis of a clef, if I manage to surmount the challenges of the new software; but I doubt that I can improve upon it.
Last edited by John Ruggero on 19 Nov 2015, 09:02, edited 1 time in total.
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tisimst
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Re: Clef design comparision

Post by tisimst »

If you've got a higher resolution image, I don't see any reason why you can't crop it to just the treble clef, or even a small snippet of the score. You wouldn't be sharing the actual full score with anyone.
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Knut
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Re: Clef design comparision

Post by Knut »

John Ruggero wrote:Browsing casually through some music this afternoon, I came upon my Holy Grail of treble clefs. It resembles Wess's Henle clef but improves upon it in certain details. It is from a excellent edition of the Bach Partitas published by Wiener Urtext edition (2004) and is not their usual treble clef, which resembles the new Henle clef.

http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/6-p ... ic/6546644 will give some idea of it, but unfortunately the detail which makes it so special is lost. I would love to post it, but I am concerned about copyright. Does anyone know if my concerns are unjustified? In any case, I am going to use it as the basis of a clef, if I manage to surmount the challenges of the new software; but I doubt that I can improve upon it.
Those clefs look beautiful even at low resolution.

BTW, is this closer to what you prefer (I just couldn't help myself):
WideTreble.png
WideTreble.png (37.8 KiB) Viewed 11835 times
Knut
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Re: Clef design comparision

Post by Knut »

tisimst wrote:Nicely done, Knut! Seeing more of the Menuet font family together in a score helps to visualize the cohesiveness of you designs.
Thanks!
I'm glad you appreciate the effort.
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OCTO
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Re: Clef design comparision

Post by OCTO »

Knut wrote: Here's my font in the very tight context of the third movement of Ravel's string quartet. The work was kind of rushed, and somewhat difficult, so be gentle.
Beautiful!
One short comment:

I have learned a very nice setting from Peter West. He pointed me to hairpins, which are to thin (lines) and to open by default in Finale.
His comments on French editions are correct: their haripins have very small opening. I would therefore recommend to have the same line width as the ledger lines and smaller opening of the hairpins.
tisimst wrote: Here's an example of 8 in context (with a stylesheet I created for it):
Beautiful done too!!
I am amazed by the quality of font and lines settings reproduction.
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Knut
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Re: Clef design comparision

Post by Knut »

OCTO wrote: Beautiful!
One short comment:

I have learned a very nice setting from Peter West. He pointed me to hairpins, which are to thin (lines) and to open by default in Finale.
His comments on French editions are correct: their haripins have very small opening. I would therefore recommend to have the same line width as the ledger lines and smaller opening of the hairpins.
Thank you, Octo!

I actually thought about doing what you suggested, but I think Peter's comment to Durand's hairpins was in reference to their current style sheet. Older scores, like this string quartet, had a wider opening, closer to my default settings.

In any case they could perhaps benefit from a narrower opening in such a tight context, even if the source features a wider setting.
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John Ruggero
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Re: Clef design comparision

Post by John Ruggero »

First, I was unclear that I preferred Wess's "old" Henle G clef, the first one that he posted. This was the one that I meant looked much like my new favorite Wiener Urtext.

Second, congratulations, Knut, on your beautiful engraving and the new clef which is very close to the Holy Grail Wiener Urtext clef. I don't know how you did that without a scan. Will you include this one in your font? It is interesting the way your clef and my new one are converging. Yours has a slightly shorter appearance than Wiener. I will overlay them later today to see what is going on and pursue clef experiments of my own with the recommended software.
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Knut
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Re: Clef design comparision

Post by Knut »

John Ruggero wrote:Second, congratulations, Knut, on your beautiful engraving and the new clef which is very close to the Holy Grail Wiener Urtext clef. I don't know how you did that without a scan. Will you include this one in your font? It is interesting the way your clef and my new one are converging. Yours has a slightly shorter appearance than Wiener. I will overlay them later today to see what is going on and pursue clef experiments of my own with the recommended software.
Thank you, John! It's been an interesting discussion and process for me. I guess I just developed a feeling for what you were looking for, so I didn't really intend to copy the Wiener clef. From the low resolution pictures, it looks quite a bit bolder than Wesses old Henle clef, though. That one is much too thin to fit with the aesthetics of my font.

Yes, I will more than likely change the clef to the new one. I like it better, but the font contains some 50 ligatures based on the treble clef, in addition to the more common treble clef variations. All in all ca. 60 glyphs will have to be redone as a consequence! I'll do some more testing and tweaking on the entire clef set before I make a final decision. Any additional comments in the meantime would be appreciated.

The longer appearance of the Wiener clef might be due to a narrower head (I widened mine a bit in the new version) or a longer stem. Also, if it doesn't make a perfect symmetrical cross on the d line like mine does, that could affect the proportions as well. Take a look at the Henle clef again, and you'll see what I mean. The crossing of the lines below the head is a bit higher on that clef. This is one of my pet peeves when it comes to the treble clefs. To me, the cross should be perfectly centered on the line. Anyway, I'll be interested to hear what you find.

Good luck with your own clef, and thanks again!
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