Page Turn Notation
In hand-written manuscripts I've been transcribing from the Baroque era, the composer sometimes clues the musician about what the next note will be in the following page, line, or system. Is there such a "non-note" in Musescore?
The attached image is from Graupner's Christmas Cantata 1105-44, "Freude, Freude", pdf page 28. It shows a half-measure at the end of the first line, followed with the remainder in the next line. Such a notation would be helpful for tricky page turns in modern scores.
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Comments
You could use a "Grace note after" for this maybe? Make it silent and enclose the head with parentheses?
In reply to You could use a "Grace note… by Jojo-Schmitz
Musescore includes the up and down custos for mediaeval music: Shift+F9 for master palette / Symbols / Medieval and Renaissance miscellany. However I don't think they look right for Baroque music. You could create your own in a graphics program, or even combine other symbols from the palette. Once you've done that you can use Image Capture to save as a SVG with a transparent background, and add to a palette of your choice.
Whether today's players would recognise such a symbol in modern music is another matter. It's a good idea - I occasionally pencil them into my own parts but then I am used to the Med/Ren/Baroque practice.
Thanks for the suggestions. I'll experiment.
In reply to Thanks for the suggestions… by Hitchcock1939
I was going to make the same two suggestions, but I was waiting to see if someone a little more experienced had others. A few hints: 1) The "grace-note after" method might present problems if the measure ends with a rest.
2) When you use SMUFL symbols from the master palette, you have to be careful to match the font that you are using in the score, otherwise they may look a little funny.
Even though it is listed under "Medieval and Renaissance Miscellany," I have seen glyphs that look very much like the "Custos-up" in (reprint) editions of Baroque music. I think this is the route I would be more inclined to take, myself.
Of course, a lot depends on whether you're trying to re-create an authentic score, or prepare a performing edition.
Many special signs may be used in handwritten notes. But when I look at the note in the picture you added, what I see is a sign indicating "the measure is divided from here, it continues on the next line". You can write this measure without division. The author may have wanted to use every space in order not to waste the paper.
Of course this is my personal opinion.
In reply to Many special signs may be… by Ziya Mete Demircan
I agree with Ziya. When I looked at the pic, that was my thought.
In reply to Many special signs may be… by Ziya Mete Demircan
It was very common to see these custos in printed music too, though - in the OP's example above the fact that the measure is divided to save space (common at the time) is irrelevant. The reason there is no custos in the last bar of the second line is that it ends with a rest, so that there is time for the player to look ahead to the next line. Of course, printers weren't always consistent, and occasionally it was omitted because they hadn't left enough space at the end of a line.
Here is a page from a Telemann sonata, printed in Hamburg in 1727. The Musescore "custos up" is quite a good match, and would be even better with a longer tail.
In reply to It was very common to see… by Brer Fox
Thanks for the illustration and the terminology. I googled "musescore 'custos up'", which lead to https://www.blutafec.com/musescore-gravure-renaissance/, a French-language site containing instructions for finding the Custos Up item in the Symbols palette. The Custos Up symbol is close to what I'm looking for, shape-wise. I can always put a note in the score explaining what it is since it is not standard notation. I will also explore the graphics method suggested above to create a custom shape to import into Musescore.
In reply to Thanks for the illustration… by Hitchcock1939
Further note - I did not look up the definition of "custos" before my previous reply. Music-encoding.org defines custos as "Symbol placed at the end of a line to indicate the first note of the next line. Sometimes called a 'direct'". This is exactly what I was looking for.
Thanks to everyone who responded, thanks, community.
In reply to Many special signs may be… by Ziya Mete Demircan
Miserly use of paper is certainly what is going on here. In several places, a multiple-instrument movement ends with a few measures on the left side of the page, and a recitative of a voice and continuo line takes up on the right, filling whatever space is available, then spilling out to full page width below the previous movement. Split measures are quite common, sometimes marked as in my original question, sometimes not.
In reply to Miserly use of paper is… by Hitchcock1939
Yes - music paper was very expensive in those days and such space-saving tricks were common.
In reply to Miserly use of paper is… by Hitchcock1939
All the more reason, it seems to me, to not bother with replicating what you see in an old score. We need things updated so that modern musicians can read them. Isn't what the musicians are able to produce more important? Given the choice between reading the Telemann above and a modern version of it, which do you think will be easier to read and thereby have better results?
In reply to All the more reason, it… by bobjp
Hence my comment above questioning whether one is attempting to create a scholarly, Ur-text replication of the original score, or a performing edition. But having custoses (custodes?) does make music easier to read, even by modern musicians--we've all scribbled them into our scores, right? So why did engravers stop using them?
According to his Wikipedia bio, Graupner wrote over 1400 church cantatas alone--the designation of one cited above, 1105-44, indicates it is the forty-fourth of the ones he wrote for just Christmas Day alone, No wonder he needed to save paper!
Is the OP at all involved with all the scores of Graupner which have been appearing on IMSLP in the last several years?
In reply to Hence my comment above… by wfazekas1
"-we've all scribbled them into our scores, right? So why did engravers stop using them?"
No. Can't say I have ever used them in the 50+ years of composition. I have never seen them in anything I've played. That may or may not mean anything.
It seems to me that modern notation software can't do some of the things needed for this type of printout. So why not do it the way it is intended. By hand.