Beam direction in large intervals

• Feb 13, 2025 - 14:22

I'm transcribing a Baroque composer's manuscripts from scans, so looking at his handwriting. It appears to be a standard practice in the period that when a run of beamed notes includes a large interval jump, one or more of the note stems go in the opposite direction. The result is a little twisty, but it fills the space efficiently. Looking at how Musescore, and I would guess any other app scribes it out, all notes attach to the beam one way, leaving a giraffe-like group of notes.

Is there a style rule in contemporary scribing that opposes placing stems opposite ways? There might be complications to establishing a "properties" set for when to apply opposing stems, but is it something that is under consideration for Musescore?

Composer's sample attached. Both images from same measure.
- R

Attachment Size
Opposing_stems_250213.png 70.48 KB
Giraffe_notes_250213.png 4.79 KB

Comments

Do you still have an unanswered question? Please log in first to post your question.