NOTATIO

First of all, I would like to thank you a lot for all good suggestions for improving my engraving of Stenhammar’s Interlude (see previous posting viewtopic.php?t=940 ).

Eventually I came around to finalise and fine tune the engraving. For your information, I’ve attached the score to this posting.
I’ve tried to consider all your comments but in addition, the Musik- och Teaterbiblioteket / The Music and Theatre Library together with the Swedish Musical Heritage (https://www.levandemusikarv.se/about/?action=about) expressed a recommendation that I should, as much as possible, keep the engraving as Stenhammar noted it in his manuscript.

This means, I’ve kept a slight mixture between Stenhammar’s handwritten details and recommendation in e.g. Elaine Gould’s “Behind Bars”.
Example of this compromise you can find measure 35-36 where I put “meno” at the same vertical height as the hairpins. The same approach is used in measure 34-34 where I’ve put “rinforz” between the two hairpins and in measure 37 where I’ve put “molto” between the two hairpins.
As stated in my previous postings, the score and 32 instrument parts, of course, have been engraved in Lilypond. Lilypond is highly modular, so to keep it simple where simple maybe is a relative term, I’ve split the work into about 90 individual files (score plus the parts and music are 65 files, the rest is overall layout of score and parts, dynamics, definitions, rehearsal marks etc.) where common elements have been “outsourced” and reused where needed for the score and instrument parts.

You are, of course, welcome to provide further comments and suggestions but overall I think I’ve reached a state where it can be published, i.e. sent to the Swedish Musical Heritage for further processing.

Beautiful and something to be very proud of. I had only a few minor comments.

1. The tenuto indications look too close to the note heads and beams when they are not between the staff lines.

2. The expressions like cresc. etc. are a little big in relation to the dynamic signs like p etc. I would split the difference and enlarge the dynamic signs by a small amount and reduce the expressions by a little.

3. Often the cresc. and dim. are placed very close to the dynamic sign they follow. Generally more space is allowed between the two even in tight quarters.

4. When poco is associated with a hair pin, I personally prefer that it be placed inside the hairpin as I see Stenhammar himself doing in his excellently hand-written score. This does require careful coordination with the hairpin and E. Gould prefers that it be placed under or over the hairpin as you have engraved it at A in the following example. However, I don't think that the poco should be far from the hairpin as at B, or precede the hairpin as at C, because this tends to dissociate the poco from the hairpin.

Beautiful work, swetom2011 ! So clear and nicely balanced. Way to go.

First of all, thanks for comments and suggestions. Sorry I’m late with my reply but I’ve been bogged down in other issues related to some of the scientific satellites I’ve been working on prior retirement.

@ John
1. Tenuto indications
This is in fact a “generic” Lilypond problem. I’m going to write a ticket to the development team to improve this which in fact also affects the staccato dots.
I’ve been looking into a tweak for this, but it’s not so easy to find a generic solution, in particular w.r.t. position between the staff lines.
Hence, I leave a is for the time being.

2. Size of expression versus dynamics signs. What I’m using is the default Lilypond setting. For the time being, I leave it as is but will kook into it later.

3. Gap between an expression and dynamics.
For this, I’ve introduced a small change, see snapshot below.

4. Poco w.r.t. hair pin.
I’ve looked into a tweak to move it in inside the hair pin. As you wrote yourself, it’s down to a balance between the hairpin size, in vertical sense, and the text/expression that has to fit within the hairpin. In addition, the decrescendo hairpin needs to be widened as well to keep the two balanced.
For this reason, I’ve decided to put the poco at the centre (but outside) of the hairpin as shown in the picture below.

3. Great!
4. A good decision. Sorry to be a nit-picker, but the poco sometimes touches or almost the hairpin. I think that there is an (unwritten?) rule of music engraving that most elements should not appear to touch each other or be too close if there is no apparent reason for that.

John Ruggero wrote: ↑22 Apr 2023, 19:53 Sorry to be a nit-picker, but the poco sometimes touches or almost the hairpin. I think that there is an (unwritten?) rule of music engraving that most elements should not appear to touch each other or be too close if there is no apparent reason for that.

I'm with John on this. From a distance or at a quick glance, the elements appear to touch (even if they don't) which makes them difficult more to read.

I seem to recall Ted Ross mentioning the need for a little space around every element. I also recall someone stating a half-space as a default, but that really depends on the context.

I've modified (tweak) it a little. Do you think this distance is sufficient? And while I'm t, I check if I can get a good solution for the two other points from John as well.

No farther than that. And some might say a little closer. You are trying to keep the items associated with each other, without crowding them. This particular situation is more demanding than most.

:The half space that JJP mentioned seems like a good rule of thumb. And as JJP said, context plays a role. In some cases of severe space limitation, one has to do what one has to do.