NOTATIO

Very nice ties! :) As far as I know, the stem lengths don't have to match. At least that is not what I see in well-engraved music. Perhaps others disagree. And yes, one should avoid doing anything with beams that obscures the outer staff lines and thus obscures reading ledger line notes. And there a...

Our rules do change over time, often for quite practical reasons. True, of course. I hope we can agree upon this though: If you want to improve something in notational practise, it helps communicating about it if you know the traditional way you're abandoning. (BTW I don't doubt that you have this ...

That Schenker "forest of rests" makes me want to go into fits of ranting! Today, anyone who thinks that was a good choice should be dragged out back and given a private lesson! Maybe the lesson should be given in the woods hed :) The forest can also be seen at https://www.henle.de/us/deta...

Unfortunately, engravers have not always made good decisions based on readability. Showing a half measure of 6/8 as a dotted quarter rest seems to me to be a no-brainer. Clean, clear and uncluttered. Yet engravers have broken composer's dotted quarter rests into quarter rest + eighth rests for a ver...

I agree on all counts, JJP. The dotted quarter rest bothered me too. It's perfectly correct, yet begging for misunderstanding if in a single voice instrumental part. Keyboard music might be different (see example below). And yes, a staccato eighth note-16th rest combination would be much friendlier....

That's an excellent point, JJP. The most important thing is that it be easy to read. For that reason, I am guessing that you would accept what the composer requested from Anders IF there were another rest that followed, but not otherwise. Is that correct? I must admit that what the composer requeste...

Arnstein used standard brackets (like inverted bracket-only style pedal marks) over the notes to group the beats in cases like A. The parts usually came back to us in a very clean state, because everything was in order and the musicians had nothing to do but make beautiful music. And we did use exte...

That sounds right to me, Anders. The frequency of the various patterns of notes and rests is the answer. Here is another slant on it: The problem arises with many rests in a row, as with A. Pattern A is relatively unfrequent and both solutions are possible. Ex 1.png However, only one of the solution...

Yes, I am sure that Arnstein never used quarter rests in 6/8. Only dotted quarter rests. And he only broke up dotted quarter rests if necessary to have a place for a fermata etc. So his usage was exactly like Beethoven's, who also didn't normally write quarter rest-eighth rest in 6/8. This brought 6...

So maybe I was correct to begin with. Thanks for clarifying, David.