NOTATIO

Thanks, Neera. Yes, I did it in Finale, but it took work. I was able to preserve almost all of the meaningful centered beams in this very complex piece (it's from the first movement of an arrangement of the B minor Flute Sonata), so it seemed a shame to omit the one in m. 36. But it's not an essenti...

I have found only a few centered beams to be difficult to translate from manuscript to engraving in a way the preserves the import of the music. I once even resorted to a curved one and find it tolerable; maybe even more than tolerable:

In this case I believe the space saving was the key because having a beam obscure ledger lines is not something that anyone should even try to replicate nowadays. I find it fascinating as well, Neera. As I mentioned, space saving might have been the reason that the engraver (and Bach) used centered...

Very pleasant dreams.

The older style was to do exactly what you describe: rehearsal letters only at places where a conductor would be likely to restart in rehearsal that are not already marked by a repeat mark, double bar, change of tempo or key, repeat ending etc. This limited the number of rehearsal letters at a time ...

To me, it looks like the composer couldn't make up his mind, at least at first. He tries following the rule you mentioned, doesn't like the look of it, and tries the reverse, seems to like that better. Tries it one more time in violin 2, compares it to violin 1, and decides to go with under slurs, w...

Very interesting and a great addition to your library. Thanks for sharing. I found it inspiring:

https://forums.steinberg.net/t/share-so ... 922272/128

In the second movement of his Italian Concerto, Bach uses continual centered beams to distinguish two groups of instruments represented in the left hand: Italian Concerto 2 Ex 1.png Or was it just a convenient way to save space? Later editions modernize this notation because of the great difficultie...

Yes I am, NeeraWM. Have you seen this?

Composers instinctively don't like breaking up melodies visually, and rightly so. In this case, it's even worse because a clef change would drop the melody at its very climax and make what is supposed to look high, look low. I would try to find an early logical place to change to treble clef so that...