@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
