NOTATIO

So, I'm quite happy with what I've got. The old program.

Traditionally, any default is always the wrong choice, and the important thing is that they can be changed to one's liking. I've found Finale's Slurs settings (in three separate dialogs) rather hard to understand, and I've largely just blindly copied numbers from forum posts to improve things. Dori...

Anders, there has been a lot of discussion of Dorico's slurs because the default inherent slur shape (as opposed to the varying contours of the slurs as used in all the different situations) is quite different from Finale's. However, with setting changes, Dorico can achieve slurs that are comparabl...

Thanks teacue for showing this. It looks as if Dorico has thought it out well. Not having tried the program I couldn't tell if it works better than Finale or not, but it looks promising.

Can you change the settings for the curves and slopes of slurs too in Dorico?

I too am an admirer of Schnabel's playing, but I'm not sure that I followed you there. Do you think that he played the 'exordium' too fast or too slow?

A very interesting comment, Vaughan! As for Sokolov knowing about this, I'm not sure, so I'll place no bets there.

I agree on both your points, John. My examples were, as you guessed, defaults with different settings - in fact they were meant to illustrate these settings only.

I notice that I skipped one option for slur interaction: 'ignore'. Perhaps because it sounded a bit like "Just ignore it!" And the result is, well, in any case not overly pedantic.

I've found it useful to have two versions of staccati (at least). One where the slur interaction is set to 'always inside' - for portati and one-bow staccati as in A below. One set to 'auto inside/outside' - for situations as in B. The 'auto' setting does not work with portati as in A, though, as sh...