historical multimeasure rests
Dear all,
was it ever considered to add an option to use 'historical' multiple measure rests? It is still widely used by publishers, and I think it is quite elegant...
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Comments
Personally I would never use this. It just clutters up the score, and I think that's why it has fallen out of favour.
It's come up a few times, and is definitely something worth doing at some point I think. See [#44946]
In reply to It's come up a few times, and by Marc Sabatella
As an adjunct to all else, I think it should be added if there's someone who will do it. I was just offering an opinion. This is a great gift, thank you.
In reply to As an adjunct to all else, I by xavierjazz
I had a look through my printed editions. This 'old' system is used in recent (last few years) publications of Bärenreiter, Wiener Urtext Editions, Cornetto Editions, Aurea Amadeus and Henle, so I wouldn't say it is out of favour. I only have music pre 1800, so maybe it isn't used in new music?
In reply to I had a look through my by Kaspar
I think I misunderstand how they are used.
expl.: (numbers is optional)
![historic-multi-rests-201705062152.png]( "historic-multi-rests-201705062152.png")
see attachment:
not real historic multi-measure rests.
Just an imitation.
There are upsides and downsides to these.
Upside: They are indeed more elegant than the multimeasure rest symbols presently available in MS (not to put too fine a point on it: Those are not elegant at all).
Downside: They are overdetermined: They spell the number twice: in bars inside the staff and in arabic numerals above it (hence the "clutter"). This is necessary because the bars alone (which are reminiscent of Roman numerals) are not all that easily readable. Moreover they become more "cluttered" the longer the rest is. A 30 measure rest is no rarity in orchestral parts and would feature 7 vertical two line bars and and 1 one line bar. Definitely un-sight-readable on its own (the human eye can only count to five in one glance).
However, I think it would be a good idea to add them to Musescore.
In reply to There are upsides and by azumbrunn
I studied at classical conservatory. I know that these rests are used for a maximum 8 or 16 measures.
Some editions goes to "flat multimeasure rests" after 8 measures, some editions 16.
16 measures = 4 vertical two-lines.
I think it's the most preferred: up to 8 measures.
In reply to There are upsides and by azumbrunn
Not sure what you mean "not elegant at all". As far as I can tell these are completely identical to the standard multimeasure rests used by virtually all major publishers *except* those reproducing the older / historical editions. So they are exactly as elegant as those in probably 99% of published music. Or are you just saying, you don't *like* the current standard style used in most published music?
In reply to Not sure what you mean "not by Marc Sabatella
The impression mostly results from the stretch these "measures" get so that the horizontal bar is often very long and seems to be longer in longer rests (hard to be sure since the actual stretch (as opposed to the assigned figure) changes from line to line because the measures are more or less "filled" with notes and MS has to break the lines between measures. This is not--as far as I have seen--standard practice.
I always try to compress them and stretch the measures with music in them (they are easier to read if stretched a little from the default anyway). But I always get an irregular appearance with each multi measure rest having a different length.
I just tried to reproduce this and it did not look too terrible. Then I did what I always do with parts. I stretched the music (3 x shift{) to make it easier to read (the way the system generates the parts difficult passages are too compressed for easy reading). That way I got those long bars you can see in the attached file. They are easy to read and they are correct. Elegant however is not an adjective that comes to mind when l look at them. They are so massive compared to any other item in the score.
In reply to The impression mostly results by azumbrunn
Width of mmrests is indeed dependent on the actual duration of the rest, just as standard engraving guidelines call for. So it is correct for a 10 meausre rest to be longer than a 6 measure rest on the same system. But I would agree by default we probably make them too wide overall.
In reply to Width of mmrests is indeed by Marc Sabatella
In practice though this is not generally happening. Depending on the content of any one line the measures get stretched more or less to fill the line. It happens quite often that longer rests end up looking shorter than shorter rests and is not always easy to adjust manually. This becomes most obvious in orchestral parts for wind or brass instruments that are often riddled with multi measure rests, but it is sometimes evident even in chamber music parts.
It would help in this regard if multi measure rests did not expand like "normal" measures for line filling purposes but stayed constant in length, altered only by changing the layout stretch in measure properties or with shift { or shift }. Ideally they probably ought to expand less than "normal" measures when the layout stretch is made larger.
In reply to In practice though this is by azumbrunn
To be clear: width of measures on one system has nothing to do with widths on on other systems. not in published music, not in MuseScore. It is only *within* a system that you should be able to count on proportional spacing. So if you see an example on a single system of a longer duration mmrest not being wider as well, let us know. But it certainly would be perfectly normal for it to sometimes happen that a shorter duration mmrest on one system turns out to be wider than a longer one on *another* system.
As for adjusting manually, this *should* be easy as well - mmrests respond to stretch. Again, let us know if you encounter a case where this is not true.
Not sure why you'd want mmrests fixed in width and not expand. What would the point of that be? But indeed, as I said before, they are currently *too* sensitive to length, I would agree.
In reply to Not sure what you mean "not by Marc Sabatella
I always find that the current multimeasure rests are too stretched. It takes extra time, but it always looks good once I've destretched the rests and stretched the measures with notes.
''reproducing older / historical editions''. You mean reprints? I saw a few examples of that in my collection, but the examples I gave were of editions which were created in the last 2 years.