E. Gould and Piano Pedaling

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John Ruggero
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E. Gould and Piano Pedaling

Post by John Ruggero »

I had been put off by the unfortunate title, Behind Bars, conjuring up visions of musical imprisonment of some kind, but finally bought Elaine Gould's style guide to musical notation. I am greatly enjoying browsing through it and learning a lot. I am also pleasantly surprised to find so little to disagree with. Even where alternate notations are described, her common sense shines through in sharing her preferred version.

However, there is one case in which she has committed an error of omission. In the section on piano pedaling, the system in most common use, at least in the USA, and the one used by Finale in Smart Shape options: |______________| is never mentioned. In its place there is one that I have rarely seen: Ped._______________|

Perhaps this is a British thing; I seem to remember something like it in the Tovey-Craxton edition of the Beethoven Sonatas but could be wrong. However, the advantage of this system eludes me. With the all-bracket system, a single line shows the moment of depressing the pedal with great precision.

The disadvantage of any bracket system is the clutter of all the brackets. For this reason, I never use brackets and prefer the venerable Ped. *, sacrificing a little precision for a much better-looking page of music. Her combination of the two systems gives us the worst of both worlds: clutter and imprecision.

The only benefit I can see is that the markings for the three pedals might be unified: Ped.______________|
u. c._____________| Sost. Ped.____________| but I think that the traditional una corda—tre corda system is cleaner, as is Sost. Ped. *

A common criticism, of the traditional Ped. * system, which Gould also voices, is that it can't handle "overlapping" pedaling, quick changes of pedal without breaks. Overlapping pedal is shown by |_______________/\_____________| in standard bracket notation and similarly by Gould Ped._____________/\________|. However, this criticism of the Ped. * system is unfounded. One simply writes Ped. Ped. etc. at each pedal change without the asterisk, and we have clearly notated overlapping pedal. This simple notation goes unrecognized by Gould and also by Human Playback in Finale, which does not allow one Ped. to cancel another to stop the sound unless the * is present. That is a shame.
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OCTO
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Re: E. Gould and Piano Pedaling

Post by OCTO »

Thank you for this. I have never been thinking about all these details, since I am a violinist...
John Ruggero wrote:In the section on piano pedaling, the system in most common use, at least in the USA, and the one used by Finale in Smart Shape options: |______________| is never mentioned.
Can you confirm this by some older editions? I see only difference between Ped__| and |___| in space saving.
But probably E.G. wants to make another standard.

Also, I deeply distaste her use of Sibelius in that book. Manually done would be much better.
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dspreadbury
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Re: E. Gould and Piano Pedaling

Post by dspreadbury »

Faber, who publish Behind Bars and for whom Elaine is their chief editor, produce all of their publications in Sibelius, so it's not much of a surprise to see Sibelius being used to produce the music examples in the book. The book was in development for so many years that some of the examples are from the original Acorn version of Sibelius, rather than the later Windows and OS X versions. I'm not sure why you would have such distaste for the use of Sibelius in producing the examples for the book (speaking not only as somebody who has taken pride over the years in working on Sibelius to make it suitable for professional use and capable of professional results, but also as a reader of the book) since they communicate the meaning of the text clearly and simply, which is surely what they are there for.

Regarding this pedal notation issue, I find John's assertion that the use of brackets without the ornate "Ped." at the start is the most common convention in use: the music I have seen here in the UK almost universally uses the "Ped." symbol, either in combination with the asterisk symbol to show when it should be lifted, or using brackets. I have rarely seen a bracket without "Ped." at its left-hand end. Perhaps this really is an area where there is significant difference between European and American publishers.
Knut
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Re: E. Gould and Piano Pedaling

Post by Knut »

OCTO wrote:Also, I deeply distaste her use of Sibelius in that book. Manually done would be much better.
I can see where you're coming from with regard to the use of the default Opus font, since I'm not a big fan of that one either. That said, I think the examples over all are very well done, much better than most other reference books on the subject. Engraving the examples manually would of course never be an option, since it would most certainly exceed Faber's budget by, let's just say, a lot.
John Ruggero wrote:Her combination of the two systems gives us the worst of both worlds: clutter and imprecision.
Using the traditional :ped with a succeeding bracket doesn't really seem any more or less precise to me than using brackets alone, and certainly does not seem to enable any less precision than many other musical indications. As a space saving alternative, I can definitely see it as superior, but a text indication has the advantage of being informative without demanding familiarity with a strictly visual convention.
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OCTO
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Re: E. Gould and Piano Pedaling

Post by OCTO »

dspreadbury wrote:Faber, who publish Behind Bars and for whom Elaine is their chief editor, produce all of their publications in Sibelius, so it's not much of a surprise to see Sibelius being used to produce the music examples in the book. The book was in development for so many years that some of the examples are from the original Acorn version of Sibelius, rather than the later Windows and OS X versions. I'm not sure why you would have such distaste for the use of Sibelius in producing the examples for the book (speaking not only as somebody who has taken pride over the years in working on Sibelius to make it suitable for professional use and capable of professional results, but also as a reader of the book) since they communicate the meaning of the text clearly and simply, which is surely what they are there for.
Dear Daniel, I understand it completely. And I am of course very aware of Sibelius' great power in output quality - no doubt!

Maybe I am to hard about that, but I really always disliked the way it looks, just that.
What I mean is following: hand engraved examples would truly take care of the exact engraving technique and engraving philosophy, so to say, it would reflect The Engraving in the purest sense of that meaning done by hand. I would also have it difficult to accept it in Finale either (similarly I dislike the output of Gerou/Lusk), and therefore it lacks important point of views that could be noticed with manual engraving: nothing about accidental kerning (I haven't found it in that sense, let me know if I am mistaken), nothing about the slur settings (tip thickness, arc thickness, flat slurs, arc diversity impossible with S/F), nothing about different spacing ratios, ...

For my opinion I have a very strong foundation, I believe: many many things in Finale and Sibelius are done AUTOMATICALLY, so to speak - the most of composers and engravers can produce a satisfactory score even not knowing all engraving rules in detail. For instance, almost none would change the order of accidentals in a chord using Finale or Sibelius. We believe it is done properly when entering, but that is covered in detail in the book. So, her book goes far behind digital engraving (F. S. LP. MS. etc) and is intended for manual engraving much more. On the other side, NOTHING impossible in Sibelius has been touched, such as flat slurs or slur diversity, kerning etc.
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Knut
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Re: E. Gould and Piano Pedaling

Post by Knut »

OCTO wrote:For my opinion I have a very strong foundation, I believe: many many things in Finale and Sibelius are done AUTOMATICALLY, so to speak - the most of composers and engravers can produce a satisfactory score even not knowing all engraving rules in detail. For instance, almost none would change the order of accidentals in a chord using Finale or Sibelius. We believe it is done properly when entering, but that is covered in detail in the book. So, her book goes far behind digital engraving (F. S. LP. MS. etc) and is intended for manual engraving much more. On the other side, NOTHING impossible in Sibelius has been touched, such as flat slurs or slur diversity, kerning etc.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean by 'manually', but even though Finale and Sibelius leave a lot to be desired with their automatic processes and default settings, they give the user the ability to correct and improve upon most of these results manually. In this sense, computer based engraving becomes manual engraving, albeit with different tools. Given that Gould's book is trying to address conventions relevant for this day in age, when computer based engraving is the method used almost exclusively, I find it very appropriate that the book is done using computer software, demonstrating what can be done with those tools and manual work combined. To me, engraving the examples using outdated tools, would make the book less relevant.

Just my two cents.
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OCTO
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Re: E. Gould and Piano Pedaling

Post by OCTO »

Manually, I mean with hand and some analog sheet (paper or else).

Knut (and Daniel), maybe you are right about what you say, and I need to digest my feeling for some period... :)
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John Ruggero
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Re: E. Gould and Piano Pedaling

Post by John Ruggero »

dspreadbury wrote:
Regarding this pedal notation issue, I find John's assertion that the use of brackets without the ornate "Ped." at the start is the most common convention in use: the music I have seen here in the UK almost universally uses the "Ped." symbol, either in combination with the asterisk symbol to show when it should be lifted, or using brackets. I have rarely seen a bracket without "Ped." at its left-hand end. Perhaps this really is an area where there is significant difference between European and American publishers.
As I said, the all-bracket system is the one in most common use "at least in the USA".

As exhibit A , I offer the fact that Finale does not offer a smart shape option for Ped._______| system; only the all-bracket system.

As Exhibit B I offer pages taken at random by various large US publishers:

http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/cho ... ic/3663900
http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/an- ... ic/3603858
http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/joh ... ic/1549219

However, my point was that E. Gould in writing a definitive work on current notational practice should have listed this commonly-seen alternative, whatever its prevalence.

Knut wrote:
Using the traditional :ped with a succeeding bracket doesn't really seem any more or less precise to me than using brackets alone
If one is dealing with 8 tightly-packed 32nd notes and need to specify an exact Ped. location, say on the 4th, there can be uncertainty with the Ped. symbol, because there is no universal agreement on whether the "P" or the "e" shows the exact point of depression. On the other hand, a line is infallible in its exactitude.
Last edited by John Ruggero on 11 Dec 2015, 12:27, edited 4 times in total.
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John Ruggero
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Re: E. Gould and Piano Pedaling

Post by John Ruggero »

I myself found the musical examples in E. Gould's book to be beautifully engraved and compliment the engraver on his work.

But I did have one reservation about the examples, and this is actually my greatest criticism of her book.

I think that Gould missed a wonderful opportunity to make the book more compelling by failing to use more examples from actual pieces of music. In all honesty, I found the examples to be arid, unappetizing and gratuitously dissonant. I understand the difficulties in tracking down the necessary examples, gaining permission to use them etc., but showing what composers and their engravers have actually done would have given a greater feeling of authenticity to the book, as well as offering opportunities for her to inject some personality through comments about the examples.
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Knut
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Re: E. Gould and Piano Pedaling

Post by Knut »

John Ruggero wrote:If one is dealing with 8 tightly-packed 32nd notes and need to specify an exact Ped. location, say on the 4th, there can be uncertainty with the Ped. symbol, because there is no universal agreement on whether the "P" or the "e" shows the exact point of depression. On the other hand, a line is infallible in its exactitude.
I've always thought text markings should be left aligned with the first note it applies to in very tight situations and don't really see any reason for this not to apply to pedal indications as well.
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