NOTATIO

Is anyone else experiencing this minor, but slightly disconcerting oddity? For a while (a week, maybe more) every time I log in to this forum, after being logged out for a while, the first attempt fails, but the second always succeeds. This is specific to notat.io and doesn't happen with anything el...

What is your opinion (both of you, John and Anders, if either of you have read it) of William Kinderman's Beethoven's Diabelli Variations (Studies in Musical Genesis, Structure & Interpretation) ? I've not read it, but am wondering whether or not to buy it for further enlightenment. One of the effec...

… … …Bearing in mind that Beethoven at first had a very low opinion of Diabelli's waltz, 'with its Schusterflecke' (shoemaker's smears), you may stumble on another interpretation of this enigmatic variation: that it's all about mock profundity.… … … FWIW and for the record the usual idiomatic Engli...

Musically, I think we agree on the Diabelli Variations. Philosophically, I find ‘greatest’ too absolute. Now that I'm a tad oldish (79) I've come to feel (I'd been inclined to say ‘I've come to realize’, but that suggests the absolute) that life has no absolutes except death. Politically (maybe that...

… … …The whole range of human emotion is traversed in those Diabelli Variations, maybe the greatest work for the piano. That is certainly the view of Alfred Brendel. I find the Diabelli Variations endlessly fascinating and wonderful, but I find myself less and less inclined to the notion of competi...

Yes, I've just listened to Christian Gerhaher & Gerold Huber in that last song. The Breitkopf edition (which I have here) is immediately clear to me as a non-Pianist, so that I could read it in my head before confirming the reality via the recording. The original notation had me scratching that same...

Which sort of comes back to my original question as to whether or not it is appropriate for a contemporary composer to do this. I have not written a lot of piano music, but am contemplating at least one, maybe two song cycles for a husband and wife who are able to perform together on-line at present...

… … …Why some subject themselves to this kind of torture is beyond me. Because for this old (senile?) man learning new software might be an even greater torture. I'm not a music ‘engraver’ as such. I compose in manuscript and then prepare a fair copy in Finale from which I (or somebody) can prepare...

This is from Schumann's Dichterliebe. I'm interested in the crotchets (quarters) in the right hand. It's clear what is meant, but would it be acceptable to notate it thus nowadays, or would one be advised to do it differently?

If only I wasn't so old (79) I'd now give Dorico a very serious go, but I just feel it would be a distraction (to add to all the others of the time). I'm almost tempted to give up computer typesetting & return exclusively to the medium in which I'm most naturally fluent: manuscript… Best not, I supp...