piano slur question

[MichelRE]

this is one I can't seem to figure out.

in a piano part, both hands are playing the exact same thing, 2 octaves apart.

there are slurs to indicate where phrases start and stop.

Should those be included in BOTH staves of the piano part? or only in the upper staff?

I look at it and it looks busy and cluttered with both parts getting slurs,
but it looks illogical when I remove the slurs from the bottom staff and leave only the top staff slurred.

[John Ruggero]

In piano music, slurs indicate legato areas, not necessarily where complete musical thoughts begin and end. So the current convention would be to place legato slurs for both hands if both hands are legato, since if no slur appears it would mean that that hand is to be played non legato. In the 18th century, composers might well simplify to one slur over the entire grand staff if both hands are legato and have the same or similar material. One sees that in Mozart and Beethoven for example.

[MichelRE]

I examined some more modern piano scores I have, like some Prokovieff, where the writing has a texture more similar to what I need,
and noticed that there seems to be a prevalence of placing slurs opposite sides of the grand staff, for example, upper staff would get slurs above, while lower staff got slurs below the staff... this despite going against the normal convention of placing slurs in regards to range and stem direction.

So a few instances where one would expect the upper staff to have slurs under that staff, they were flipped to above.
I actually found this quite readable and made the score more logical.

Am I to understand that there's a certain amount of latitude afforded piano notation that isn't there for other music?

[John Ruggero]

Am I to understand that there's a certain amount of latitude afforded piano notation that isn't there for other music?

I think that sums it up well, except that I'm not sure I'd call it "latitude" or "license", as if rules were being bent or something. When it comes to certain matters of notation, like stem direction and slur position, which matters little to most musicians, I think that composers make the rules, not engravers or theorists.

Absolutely, the slurs look better placed symmetrically on either side of the grand staff in the situation that I think you have in your piece, and it has often been done that way by composers and publishers.

[MichelRE]

Thank-you John.