Music Pubisher Software

Recommendations concerning notation and publishing software in a non-partisan environment.
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John Ruggero
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Re: Music Pubisher Software

Post by John Ruggero »

dspreadbury wrote: 25 Oct 2021, 15:53 I find that a bit unlikely, John. I've met Henle's two Finale engravers, and I can tell you that more than any other Finale users I've ever met, they use Finale as closely as they can like the proverbial metal engraving plate. No detail is left unchanged, and I'm certain that they spend more time per page tweaking things from their defaults than pretty much any other user you could name.
That is very interesting information, Daniel. It's good to hear that the Henle Finale engravers are taking such care. I dearly hope that they and the whole editorial staff have access to the Henle plate engravers, whose knowledge it would be wonderful to tap.

Then it must be the Henle Amadeus or Sibelius engravers who are producing engraving that is not up to the old standards. I noticed these balloon-shaped slurs in their new "improved" edition of the Brahms Clarinet Trio, which look like the engraver simply allowed what was produced by the software to stand without the necessary hand adjustments. I commented on it along with the generally anemic look of the engraving compared to the plate engraving of the past on the Henle blog.

One can look through the whole piece at:

https://www.henle.de/us/detail/?Title=C ... cello_1125

Here is one example from the new Henle edition:
Henle slurs.jpeg
Henle slurs.jpeg (51.87 KiB) Viewed 3770 times
Here is the same measure from the Breitkopf and Haertel Complete works:
B&H slurs.jpeg
B&H slurs.jpeg (46.85 KiB) Viewed 3768 times
I haven't seen this decline at Wiener Urtext, which apparently also uses Finale.
M1 Mac mini (OS 12.4), Dorico, Finale 25.5, GPO 4, Affinity Publisher 2, SmartScore 64 Pro, JW Plug-ins, TG Tools, Keyboard maestro

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Fred G. Unn
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Re: Music Pubisher Software

Post by Fred G. Unn »

John Ruggero wrote: 26 Oct 2021, 22:21 One can look through the whole piece at:

https://www.henle.de/us/detail/?Title=C ... cello_1125
After perusing through your link, the detail that really jumped out to me was the beam slant settings. Perhaps this is due the the fact that Ben and I were recently geeking out over beam angles in Dorico, but I don't think there's a beam slant of over a half space in any of the visible pages. That seems really odd. It's not particularly hard to do in Dorico, Finale, or Sibelius so I'm not sure that's much of a clue. (In Finale using Patterson Beams with a max angle of 12 EVPUs gets better stem lengths than just setting it in Document Options / Beams)

Finale doesn't easily allow for accidental "tucking" in situations like this. Of course it can be done manually, but it seems highly unlikely that someone would go through the effort to fix the spacing but not fix the slur. My Sibelius skills are pretty rudimentary so I'll defer to the experts here on this, but Sib doesn't seem to easily allow for accidental "tucking" here either, at least not by default. Perhaps there's a plug-in or another way that can quickly accomplish this.

Dorico easily allows for the left hand spacing seen in the Henle edition that "tucks" the accidental with the E3 and D#4, E3 and D natural, and E3 and D#2 in your example. Obviously Daniel would know if he checks back in on this thread, but ... is this Dorico?
dspreadbury
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Re: Music Pubisher Software

Post by dspreadbury »

No, so far as I know Henle have not yet originated any publication using Dorico. In any case they certainly wouldn't be held back by the fact that their software tools of choice don't support "tucking" of accidentals on one rhythmic position above or below an adjacent one – they would simply make those adjustments by hand, as I am sure they have done many thousands of times since they started using computer engraving 20 years ago.

On the subject of the so-called "balloon" slur, I think slur shaping and positioning is more of an art than a science, once you get past the things that are widely acknowledged to be "wrong", like the apex of slurs touching staff lines, or the end points of slurs colliding with notes... but even those normally undesirable outcomes are of course sometimes allowable – indeed, the start of the slur John is questioning is practically touching the notehead in the Breitkopf engraving.

The "balloon" slur in the new Henle engraving confers two possible advantages over the flatter one in the Breitkopf edition: it doesn't skim the stem of the flat, and its right-hand end arrives closer to the destination notehead. Perhaps the Henle engraver was also blessed with a slightly more generous helping of vertical space for that particular system, which allowed him or her to decide to prioritise endpoint proximity over contour in that case.

Personally speaking I don't find curvier slurs "worse" than flatter ones, at least not as a general rule. Both the Henle slur and the Breitkopf slur are perfectly functional. I think a great deal of this comes down to personal taste.
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John Ruggero
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Re: Music Pubisher Software

Post by John Ruggero »

Concerning the beam slanting, as one can see from the Breitkopf example, the older hand engravers followed the contour of the notes and were less concerned about creating "bad" angles with the staff lines. To me, this is a much more musical approach, and very helpful to the player, but perhaps a question of taste.

However, I consider the Henle slur in the example above to be atrocious, because it goes against a basic principal of good engraving: keep elements that belong together, together. There is no reason for this slur to run up closer to notes in the upper staff than the notes it is actually affecting, which is not only visually distracting to the player, but also uses up acres of white space for no good reason. It is the white space between the various independent elements that gives to clarity to music engraving. To me it looks as if the engraver is trying to keep the ends of the ties at a fixed distance from the note heads at all costs, which is impossible when there is a sudden drop-off at the end.

The Breitkopf example shows the proper general shape appropriate for such a slur. It's certainly imperfect, as hand- engraved slurs can be. It starts too close to the first note, as you mentioned, Daniel, and could have had a slightly more graceful arc. Here is an example in Finale with my default settings, which I think is already better than the Henle, and then with some hand adjustment:
Brahms Trio example.jpeg
Brahms Trio example.jpeg (147.38 KiB) Viewed 3675 times
In general, I think the slurs are too arched throughout much of this edition. Some of it is a question of taste. But the result of this and other factors makes it look to me unlike Henle editions of the past.
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Fred G. Unn
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Re: Music Pubisher Software

Post by Fred G. Unn »

John Ruggero wrote: 27 Oct 2021, 20:17 Here is an example in Finale with my default settings, which I think is already better than the Henle, and then with some hand adjustment:
Did you offset Layer 2 in the right hand of the "default" example with the Note Position Tool? Or is there a setting to do that? If that was an automatic setting, then I'm showing my Finale rust as I don't recall a way to do that automatically, LOL! (After 20+ years, I've pretty much only used it for XML for a couple of years now.) That doesn't look like Patterson Beams to me though, do you typically use it? Do you have custom settings for it?

Here's Dorico with my default settings. Literally no manual adjustments at all other than selecting the first tuplet, "Select More" 2x, then hide the numbers. So 5 clicks or keystrokes total after default input.

Image

Ok, the slur is laughably bad. I guess it's the tritone drop coupled with the accidental avoidance that really screws it up. Literally 7 Alt-Shift-arrow or Alt-arrow clicks later though I have this:

Image

That is quite literally only 12 clicks or keystrokes from default entry, which seems pretty good to me. I think the Breitkopf alignment between the right and left hands on beats 2 and 4 might be a bit more elegant than either of us as the left hand seems to be centered between the offset noteheads. Interesting that's how the engraver chose to handle that situation. Henle offsets the upper octaves to the right, as does Dorico. (I know Daniel said no, but I still wonder if that is Dorico ...) For piano music I might tighten up the horizontal spacing a bit, and the little tiny dot of a broken tie under the Bb looks dumb, but this is only 12 clicks or keystrokes from my default settings which I don't think I could beat in Finale.
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John Ruggero
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Re: Music Pubisher Software

Post by John Ruggero »

That looks very nice, "Fred". Your settings for Dorico slurs are indeed excellent.

You always catch me with my Patterson beams "down" when I do quick examples. Here it is again with Patterson applied:
Brahms-Patterson.jpeg
Brahms-Patterson.jpeg (131.71 KiB) Viewed 3651 times
So, I did offset the inner voice tones by hand. That's 4 clicks. Then I should have done Patterson. That's 3 clicks since I use a keyboard command. Then I shaped the second slur only. Probably about 5 clicks. Total about 12 clicks. So its a tie.

I offset only very slightly, so I've never been concerned about which voice is centered over another in a case like this. In fact I'd probably prefer that they be collectively centered over the other hand. The offset in your examples would therefore be a bit extreme for my taste.

Here is what Gould says about long slurs:
Gould on long slurs.jpeg
Gould on long slurs.jpeg (23.69 KiB) Viewed 3651 times
Last edited by John Ruggero on 28 Oct 2021, 12:33, edited 2 times in total.
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John Ruggero
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Re: Music Pubisher Software

Post by John Ruggero »

I had another thought about the insetting. Even though my example was done hastily and without much thought about anything except the slurs, I probably would in a more finished version still place the octaves on the beat because they represent the main voice in the piano part. I would be concerned that the player would emphasize the inner voice too much if it were the other way around. I think this is why I tend to do a very slight indentation in cases of this type.

Here is the manuscript. Note that Brahms places the octaves prominently and mainly on the beat to be sure that this voice is brought out since only the piano has this part and the other instruments are reinforcing the other voices:
Brahms Clari. Trio.jpeg
Brahms Clari. Trio.jpeg (146.08 KiB) Viewed 3632 times
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dspreadbury
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Re: Music Pubisher Software

Post by dspreadbury »

Brahms obviously had no problem with curvy slurs, either...
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Fred G. Unn
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Re: Music Pubisher Software

Post by Fred G. Unn »

dspreadbury wrote: 28 Oct 2021, 12:43 Brahms obviously had no problem with curvy slurs, either...
:lol: :lol: :lol:
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Fred G. Unn
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Re: Music Pubisher Software

Post by Fred G. Unn »

John Ruggero wrote: 28 Oct 2021, 02:19 Here is what Gould says about long slurs:
I think you have the Boosey guide and it has some good slur advice in it. The Schirmer guide is good too. (That one is all in SCORE)

If you want to see extreme non-curviness in a notation guide check out the Button/Elgar book "System in Musical Notation" from 1919.

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