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phoebejeebies
Registered User
Posts: 12
(7/6/01 7:05:35 pm)
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accidentals
dear everyone,
All right, this is really a two-part question
sparked by an obscure 20th century quartet part I'm working on.
1.) In a cadenza with no meter (i.e., a passage containing
no bar lines) should accidentals carry through the whole
cadenza?
2.) Does a carried accidental affect only the pitch
in the same octave as the original accidental? For example, if I
have a low E-flat.. are only low E's to be made flat, or E's in all
octaves?
The manuscript I'm working off of is apparently
hand-written, so the composer may or may not have followed all of
the rules of proper music publishing. At any rate, there's a short
non-metrical cello cadenza, and I'm trying my hardest to figure it
out.
The solo starts with a low E flat, and after that, I
can't figure out what to do with the E's. There are a bunch of low
E's right at the beginning of the solo, and it sounds odd to
suddenly start playing E naturals. But later on, there are higher
E's which sound better to me as E naturals. But this *is* 20th
century music, so one never knows! And to further my confusion, all
other accidentals in the passage are marked every time.
So..
if you've got any
ideas...
 , phoebe
|
 Steve
Drake
Registered
User
Posts: 381
(7/6/01 10:33:47
pm)
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Community Supporter
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Re:
accidentals
If possible, ask the composer. Composers these days tend to do
whatever they want, so it's impossible to tell what they want unless
they tell you in the score or somehow.
However - in my
experience copying lots of contemporary music, and trying to catch
problems like this in advance, most composers follow 2 rules that
might help you out. Accidentals still carry through the bar, even in
un-metered sections, but they don't pertain to the same note in
different octaves. A good copyist will catch this stuff and put
courtesy accidentals in, but composers and copyists often miss these
things.
My MP3's
My Cello
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rocel
Registered User
Posts: 27
(7/7/01 10:11:56 am)
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Re:
accidentals
Just for the sake of argument, in my experience, in a piece where
there are no barlines, each note stands alone. Because the music is
normally not functionally harmonic, it makes no sense to carry on an
accidental. So I would think that the accidentals only count for the
single note in front of which they are written...
But that's only
my opinion...(!)
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phoebejeebies
Registered User
Posts: 13
(7/7/01 10:48:51 pm)
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accidentals
I can see how either one of these two arguments makes sense. I just
wasn't sure if there were some rules about this kind of thing I
didn't know.
I would still like to know if in general,
accidentals affect pitches in all octaves or not. Figuring this out
is not usually a problem, since most good music publishers give a
courtesy accidental.. but I still wonder if there's a concrete rule
out there regarding this that I've missed in my years of music
training.
At any rate, for this quartet...I tried e-mailing
the composer, so assuming I have the right address, hopefully I'll
find out for sure how to play this. In the meantime, I'm figuring
that the section is marked "cadenza," so for the time being, I can
take liberties and just play what sounds best to me. 
cheers,
phoebe
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Daniel
Ortbals 
Registered
User
Posts: 202
(7/7/01 11:42:27
pm)
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Community Supporter
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Re:
accidentals
I believe accidentals are only supposed to apply to that specific
octave.
Dan
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