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Re: Sonatine Attique accidentals with no bar lines

Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2019-03-19 22:34

I've just spent a few minutes looking through several 20th century unaccompanied *a-metric* (no bar lines) clarinet solos and am a little surprised by what I see. In only one example by George Perle (Three Sonatas) does the composer explicitly tell the performer "An accidental affects only the note it immediately precedes (and tied notes)." So, is Perle an outlier or an exemplar of "the accepted way" of handling this?

It turns out that of the small sample I've plucked out of my music drawer, neither Penderecki, Berio, Bucchi nor Cahuzac gives the performer any instruction. Nor can you really find any consistent convention by looking at the music. They all seem to have considered chromatic changes to have some kind of persistent life, since many flats and sharps are cancelled by an explicit natural sign on the note's next occurrence. Penderecki (Prelude) *seems* to regard any persistence only in the same octave. But you really have to assume that from the specific contexts.

The four I'm looking at seem to be inclined either to think of the end of the staff as the end of a note's chromatic version or just assume that the performer will have forgotten about the sharp or flat way back in the preceding staff. I have to make a fair leap of faith and accept intuitive judgments that the F in the middle of the fifth staff is not supposed to be affected by the F# near the beginning of the 3rd or 4th staff. But that's my ear telling me how I think the note *should* sound.

So, I have to agree with Ken - if there's no explicit instruction, you have to make a musical choice based on the context, and whatever choice you make, if you can justify it, is acceptable.

Karl

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