First engraving for commentary: Koechlin Choral

[mburns]

Kia Ora (Hello) from Aotearoa New Zealand!

First I wanted to say thanks to all the folks on the forum, I've spent a good amount of time browsing and there's some fantastic advice and info on here. I've been getting really into music engraving in the last few years (had a great feeling playing off my own engravings of some baroque scores in a recital last year), and it's been really invaluable.

I tried to engrave this short piano piece by Charles Koechlin as a bit of a challenge, and while I'm pretty happy with most of it, I'd be really interested to hear what you all think. Done in Lilypond 2.25.24.

[John Ruggero]

Welcome, mburns! I am glad that you have enjoyed Notat.io. Your engraving is extremely well done. I wish that my first engraving had been as good as this!

Just a few things I noticed after comparing it to the first edition available at IMSLP:

1. You are not always following the composer's accidentals, perhaps by design or accidentally. In all the cases that I observed, the composer has made the better decisions.

2. Sometimes the text runs into other text or into other markings. I would give more air space.

3. Text markings that apply to both staves, as in m. 1 should be centered between the staves.

4. The substitution of square tuplet brackets for the slur type causes the m.g. or m. d. to be a little too far from the notes they pertain to. Personally, I prefer round brackets in music like this especially since there is no potential confusion with legato slurs.

5. Your decision to place some of the dynamics outside of the slurs produces nicer slurs but perhaps is a little less good in terms of musical communication.

[Roland_Gurt]

Hi mburns, in addition to what John said, maybe proofread once more the markings, I noticed "en cédant un peu" is missing (before a tempo); correct spelling of "sans dureté" (2x); lié instead of liè (if my french serves me right here)

also, "Composed 1922" is the only English text... maybe consider changing that to French as well!

staff lines are a bit thin for my taste

...I’m talking details because the standard is already high!

best regards!

[mburns]

Thanks John and Roland for your advice, it was really helpful.

I hadn't considered changing the tuplet brackets to slurs. I'm a flautist most of the time so I can't remember the last time I saw tuplet slurs that were not horrifically unclear, but trying it out I see what you mean. Another tool to add to my kit.

I totally agree with you John on the upper dynamics. Unfortunately, after a good bit of figuring I still can't get lilypond to get the hairpins to play nice under the slur. I have a sneaking suspicion it's to do with the Slur.encompass-objects internal property, but it's a bit much for this score. Similarly I didn't want to spend to much time working out how to hard-code some of the accidentals, but I did change the accidental style to 'neo-modern-voice' which seems to be more consistent with the original.

Thanks for the French notes Roland, my French practically non-existant so it would have taken me a lot to notice those. I had a friend very kindly give me the "de l'ouvrage collectif", which I am very greatful for!

I've attached the adjusted score. It's still not perfect (in particular I notice the tuplet-slur slur collision before a Tempo, and the smorz. at the end that I can't seem to convince to lower) but I think I'm happy to leave it here for now, and take those comments onto my next thing. I did adjust the Staff thickness a little which I'm unsure about but I thought would be interesting to share.

Thanks again!

[John Ruggero]

You are very welcome, mburns. Much improved.

Thanks for keeping an open mind about the tuplet brackets. Your curved tuplet brackets are a little longer than a normal slur and overlap the stems. I use the opposite strategy and make them a bit shorter. (Actually quite a bit shorter.) They are less in the way, and are more easily distinguished from legato slurs.

I guess we can agree to differ on the accidentals. I prefer the older system in which cautionaries are used whenever there is an actual danger of misunderstanding and not restricted in register. For example, the natural on the last E in the next to last measure confused me after all the previous E naturals in the measure. I finally found its origin in the E sharp way back in the previous measure on the previous line. I don't think a composer of that time would have considered this necessary. Yet you eliminated the naturals at the beginning of the third measure that Koechln felt were necessary because of the feeling of E major at the end of the previous measure, despite the fact that an F sharp appears (in the previous measure) almost immediately before the F natural. I assume this was because it is not in the same register. I also use the modern system, but temper it a bit along the lines of the older approach and would have kept at least the F natural and maybe the others out of respect for the composer's opinion.

The left hand chord at the end of measure 4 is a fifth in the original but inverted to a fourth in your version. Is this an error in the original?

Placing the dynamics above the slurs seems OK to me. But isn't there a GUI version of LilyPond that allows for graphical tweaking?

[mburns]

Oops, that's an error on my part! As were a couple more that I found this morning.

I definately agree with you on the accidentals, the composer's are better. I had anther go at adding in cautionaries this morning and with some tweaks it worked a lot better this time. I still need to go through and find a combination of cautionaries and accidental style that work a bit more elegantly, but that's doable.

I think there is a gui editor someone made, but I haven't tried it. Iirc correctly it has some good tools for editing slurs, so maybe I'll check it out. I got a lot out of editing the behaviour of slurs at the score level in this score, and haven't tried editing control-points yet, so I don't know quite how much of a pain that will be in a text editor!

[John Ruggero]

The idea of tweaking slurs in a text editor boggles my mind! But then, doing anything in a text editor does the same.

There seems to be some kind of run on this piece. I just answered a question about tuplet slurs and this piece was used as an example over at the Dorico Forum.

[odod]

Lovely engraving, I could not help myself so I am also doing the similar song but using Dorico here .. sorry for having too much differences :D
On the 1st version of your Lilypond I think too many white spaces. Praise to lilypond for all the sharpness btw.

01 - Full score - Hommage à Gabriel Fauré - 001.png (1.01 MiB) Viewed 18995 times

01 - Full score - Hommage à Gabriel Fauré - 002.png (1.27 MiB) Viewed 18995 times

[OCTO]

I'd be really interested to hear what you all think. Done in Lilypond 2.25.24.

Except what is earlier said, I can say: BRAVO! Very beautiful.
Also, I am getting into LilyPond now, what a tool.

Also, well done odod!