Ives - First Sonata for Piano

[Mr_Incognito]

The confusing bit is the mismatch between time signature and the situation as written.

[sugarfree]

Agree. The dotted barline makes it look like it’s a single measure, and the quadruplet isn’t really a quadruplet, just regular values in 2/4.

[Magnus Johansson]

Here is my suggested notation of the passage according to John's interpretation:

Screenshot_20260718_135205.png (24.19 KiB) Viewed 745 times

[John Ruggero]

Thanks, Magnus Johansson. It's probably my unfamiliarity with fractional time signatures, but a triplet that consists of 4 eighth notes is not easy for me to get my head around. Don't really see the concept of the quarter note triplet in it, which may be what Ives was trying to show. Maybe if you extend the bracket over into the next measure as Ives did it? But that might not be mathematically correct. So I guess I would lean toward Ives' original, possibly with the quadruplet omitted. A footnote might also be in order.

I haven't looked at the two Ives piano sonatas in a long time and my impression was that they were filled with obscurities of this kind. However, I was surprised to find very normal and exact notation when I just looked them over. Ives knew his way around the classical literature.

[LSL2026]

@John Ruggero

Metric Modulation.

= w/triplet bracket - and then the reverse coming out of it - like what happens here without the dotted note value:

https://filmmusictheory.com/wp-content/ ... 20x789.png


The other simple - and even obvious answer - is to just change the tempo!

If it were 120, it would speed up to 180, then right back to 120 (if my math is correct - it rarely is!)

That said, this being marked Allegro doesn’t really help with that…

It’s also not as “obvious” what’s happening - the relationship has to be “calculate” so to speak - and the math challenged like me might take a while to figure it out…

I think just changing from 2/4 to 6/16 work, the 8th note being equal would work, but it too might not be as apparent what the relationship is.

___

I agree that an irrational meter or additive/subtractive meter could work, but those wouldn’t be used with the triplet bracket too.

What might be cool, if possible, and closer to the original intent, is to just have a dashed barline AFTER the first note of the new measure that marks the end of the previous measure and then a triplet bracket that extends to that barline so it includes the first note of the 2nd measure - but a standard barline before the 3rd note of the 1/4 note triplet - so the prior measure will be “short” but the bracket will show the overlap.

IOW, just like the original, without the quadruplet bracket, and a solid barline at the start of where the quad is now, and dashed barline after, with the triplet bracket extending that far like it is originally.

Here’s a comment when I asked on another forum:

You have two choices. Metric modulation or using a '6th' note (2/6) as a time signature.

Obviously, the second one is a PITA in notation programs - and is so rare as to harm the ability for your performers to read - that you might want to go straight to Metric Modulation.

Your bar is a bar of 2/4 with each beat equal to the previous bar's quarter note triplets. So your metric modulation will look like a quarter note with a triplet bracket above it - hovering to one side so you can tell it's part of a triplet - then the equals sign, then a single quarter note.

So basically, what I said.

[John Ruggero]

Metrical modulation sounds like a better apporach to me, but I am not sure it can readily communicate Ives' "time warp", which distorts the normal linear progression of the meter. I would need to see it. The only alternative I can think of would be superimposing two grand staves in the manner of my example above.

[Mr_Incognito]

4/12 time sig and no tuplet solve the problem.

[Magnus Johansson]

More of problematic notation from the same movement of Charles Ives' Piano Sonata no. 1:

Screenshot_20260719_193317.png (12.02 KiB) Viewed 648 times

[sugarfree]

4/12 time sig and no tuplet solve the problem.

4/12 would still require marking the tuplets. Would it not? A quarter note has the same rhythmic value in 4/4 and 4/12.

[sugarfree]

More of problematic notation from the same movement of Charles Ives' Piano Sonata no. 1:

Screenshot_20260719_193317.png

the 5th note is missing an augmentation dot.