Klarinet Archive - Posting 000169.txt from 2002/09

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: [kl] Crossbeaming
Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2002 22:31:12 -0400

On Thu, 12 Sep 2002 19:18:39 -0700 (PDT), w8wright@-----.net said:

> I wrote:
>
> > Is it acceptable to beam (say) three quarter-notes and leave a
> > fourth quarter note standing by itself in 4/4 time?
>
> ....oh well.... I meant three _eighth notes_ and one eighth note by
> itself in 4/4 time, of course. I'm not talking about triplets.

Yes, both that and beaming across barlines are acceptable ways of
indicating that the player is intended to show perceptual groupings that
contradict the normal groupings of the bar.

The delicacy of how you interpret the word 'show' in that statement can
be an issue. How much do you want to show, for example, the 3 times 4,
as opposed to 4 times 3 structure of the triplets in the slow movement
of Rachmaninov's second piano concerto?

Another way of notating multirhythms (see the Lutoslawski Dance Preludes
-- number 3, I think) is to write different barlines in each part. But
that's only used rarely, and in much more complicated music than you're
talking about. It almost always causes problems to begin with.

The fact is that in our culture, two players mostly need to share a
perception of beats in order to stay together, at least initially, and
using more conventional beaming makes that easier. It may also be that
your groupings are self-evident to the listener because of the shape of
the note patterns, and don't need help from the performer in order to be
perceived; that may be why your teacher wants to say that your
cross-beamings aren't actually necessary. I think most people would
say, about the Rachmaninov triplets in the example above, that 'you just
play them'; and Rachmaninov clearly didn't feel it necessary to use
anything other than conventional beaming.

A compromise often adopted by performers when faced with confusing
notation is to mark the beats in over the cross-beamings -- in this case
by writing vertical pencil lines over the eighth notes that fall on the
four beats of the bar. That way, the cross-rhythms can be 'shown' to
whatever degree the piece called for, whilst still maintaining
perception of (though *not* showing) the beats.

Interestingly, in the music of some other cultures, quite extended
passages of conflicting rhythms are played without difficulty, and
apparently without using framing structures like bars. I remember Simon
Rattle telling me that, on holiday in Bali, he was quite struck by the
ease with which performers, particularly percussionists, dealt with very
complex multirhythms. As an ex-percussionist himself, he remarked to
one of the Balinese that European players would find playing in this way
very challenging, if not impossible.

"Oh -- do you mean that they aren't good musicians?" came the reply.

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE http://classicalplus.gmn.com/artists
tel/fax 01865 553339

... And God said, "Let there be Windoze...and he rested on that day."

---------------------------------------------------------------------