NOTATIO

What's everyone's opinion on the sextuplet position here? Erase the staff lines, or just leave below the staff?





Plate engravers always etched the staff lines first. To go back and fill them in and then engrave over was a PITA so you don't really see this much with plate engraving. With notation software it "should" be fairly easy, yet I don't really see people doing this often either. Good? Bad? Just unusual?

Maybe A or None of the Above. I don't think I've ever seen a tuplet number placed far from the beam and off the staff in a standard edition. The whole point seems to be to put them close to the stems or note heads for comprehension. And erasing staff lines has always looked hokey to me. Your tuplet numbers are nice but maybe a little thin? Perhaps if they were a little bolder they might stand out better against the staff lines?

Gould has the same problem. She wants them partially off the staff lines for legibility but her book is using this thin font for the numbers that I've only seen in engraving since computers started doing it. All the older music has a nice heavy italic font that stands out well against the staff lines.

The bold italic tuplet number always felt a bit heavy to me. Neither B&H nor Schirmer uses it in their new publications for example. You may have a point about erasing staff lines being "hokey" though. It just seems like something that was not easily achievable with plate engraving that could easily be done now. I was curious if it wasn't being done out of tradition to a time when this was difficult or just because it looks dumb

I'm guessing that they didn't erase the staff lines because this was very difficult to do and not really necessary if the tuplet number was a good weight.

Incidentally, in earlier days they preferred to place the triplet number on the note head side. Beethoven does this in every case that I am aware of, and I've grown to like it because it places the number in a more conspicuous place. But of course, they were then forced to use a slur to indicate that it was a tuplet number and to show the extent of the tuplet.