Paolo,

Thank you for the help with this.  I had the thought that it was the transposing of those instruments but just couldn't be sure.  Now I have a little fixing up to do.

Thanks again,

John

Hi Macker,

Thanks for the info about the Academy page.  I will be checking that out a little more closely.  Also will be looking for some more in depth books than what I have right now.

Take care,

John

Just another guess...

Sometimes composers use the most practical reading spelling (for the instrument player). Just as simple as (if there's no clear tonality): rising notes get a #, descending ones a b... In the case of the example, it looks something like that. But as I said, just a guess.

Jos

Hello Macker,

I finally finished my project and wanted to send you the you tube link.  You helped me back in September with some advice.

Hope you're doing well.  Take care,

John A Minardi................my pseudo name for my first you tube is Johann Oppenheimer

@Minardi said:

Hello,

I am hoping someone can answer my question on orchestral notation. 

I am in the process of recording a piece from Pictures At An Exhibition using the VSL, and I am a little confused as to why some of the instruments in the notation are obviously playing a passage in unison but a few of the notes are flat for some of the instruments while others are natural or sharp.  Is this done to create dissonance or is it another reason?  I feel a little embarrassed asking this but I never had any formal music training so I'm sure it is my lack of knowledge.

When playing back what I recorded, it simply sounds awful.  I've made other recordings before where I saw notes so close to each other but they were within the same instrument family, like the French horns or the Clarinets.

https://www.broadjam.com/songs/johnminardi/raiders-march/Play

These notes in Pictures at an exhibition are spread out between some of the woodwinds and some of the brass.  

Sincerely (and frustrated), 

John A. Minardi

johnminardi@comcast.net

In pre-20th century composition, the default practice is, when there is a key signature at the start of a piece and one of the notes in a measure is given an accidental, that accidental holds true for that measure only, and for that particular note only.  Where it gets a bit tricky is in multi-voice texture (contrapuntal or SATB, if the note with the accidental is repeated in another voice in the same measure. For example, in a piece in D-Major if in measure 12 the alto note has an accidental d# that D# is only for that measure.  Next measure (unless tied across barline) the same D would be natural.  But what about the other voices in the measure 12?  If a D is written is it sharp or natural?  According to Gardner Read's text Music Notation, on page 129, he says that the accidental holds true only for that voice within that measure.  So if there is a d4 that is sharped, a d5 or a d3 in the same measure would not be sharped unless an accidental were added to those specific notes.  But what about a situation where, say we have an SATB texture and in a given measure the alto's d4 is sharped.  Does this mean if the tenor, bass or soprano hits a d4 in the same measure that those notes should be sharped?  The answer is usually yes, all d4s in that measure would carry the accidental.  If there is any uncertainty at all, best to clarify it in the parts, if not in the score.

In the 20th century as music became increasingly chromatic and dodecaphonic, and often without any key signature at all, the practice gets a bit more complicated.   On page 53 of Music Notation in the 20th Century, Kurt Stone discusses accidentals.  He says that if an accidental is canceled within the same measure but in a different octave, it must be canceled again if the note occurs subsequently (in same measure) in the original octave. 

Another situation arises when music is highly chromatic.  Let's say a composer writes a polychord, F-minor over A-major.   What I do in this type of situation is think in terms of two triads, the F-minor chord is spelled F-A-flat-C, even if I were in the key of A-major.  If I stuck to the traditional rules, I would spell it e# g# b#.  But this doesn't feel right, nor does it express the simplicity of the triad on top.  There are situations in highly chromatic music where redundancy is called for, better to be overly-clear than leave room for ambiguity. 

In your example, these accidentals are written as they are due to instrument transposition so all of the above can pretty much be ignored!  The clarinet is written a major 2nd higher hence an e-flat is written as an f.

I abandoned transposed scores decades ago as I felt it made score-reading comprehension unnecessarily complicated.

Jerry

Hello John,

thanks so much for thinking of us and coming back to give us full closure on this labour of love.

I listened through the whole piece and enjoyed all of it. I'm also mightily impressed by your handling of VSL's wonderful VI libraries. Regardless of the technical difficulties of notation you've had to overcome, your musicianship has brought this lovely piece to life convincingly and lets us savour its beauty, charm and magic effortlessly.

Superb job, beautifully done! Bravo!

(BTW, hope you consider also posting a new thread in this forum to showcase this lovely rendition simply and directly, as it richly deserves to be, rather than leaving it only as somewhat buried in this current thread.)

Hello Macker,

Good to hear from you and thank you so much.  I'm glad you enjoyed the recording.  I will post it as you said pretty soon;  I think I just need a couple of days to clear my head of all those notes I had to read.

Take care,

John

Hi Jerry,

Thank you for the information you sent.  I read it all and was pretty amazed how complicated music composition can get.  I do sometimes wish I had chosen a music career.  In fact, my mom and dad wanted to send me to Julliard.  Growing up in New York, it would have been a great opportunity, but no regrets.  

I will be checking out your website about music composition.

Take care,

John A Minardi

just a note, a syntonic comma - 81:80 - is around 21¢ wide. If something is already very close to being "D" already, it will be that much closer. 

Also, the notion of Ebb being a lower pitch than D is a convention taught in some schools (a specific pedagogy for strings) that is not universal. It might well be that it's written by a Wagner to convey a smaller interval than a semitone in the case it's to descend to Db, but in itself it's two semitones below "E".