Musical typesetting for beginners
(edit: resize pngs to same pixel width)
What are the popular textbook or resources to go to, for novice interested in score intelligibility? Generally speaking. (need not be specific to Musescore). The feature serif / sans as an analogy in text fonts.
How do you describe the difference between these two pages? Do you feel the Moscow Muzgiz version is easier or faster to read?
Piano Concerto No. 2 Opus 18, 1st Movement – Rachmaninoff
2 Edited by Pavel Lamm of Moscow Muzgiz
1 excerpt
F G C ? ? F
2 excerpt
F G C A G F
Comments
Muzgiz engraving around this time is certainly not known for being very beautiful, though it tends to be clear enough (and they certainly got through a vast quantity of material!) Of course, it's not just about the engraving, it's about the quality of its reproduction; often nowadays we get reprints of old editions which may be not particularly well scanned (sometimes from a not very good original copy) and also often printed at an insufficiently high resolution, on not very good paper. Basically, standards are in the toilet for most print production these days.
The images you show here are very low resolution so it's not really possible to comment on which is better. Under proper viewing circumstances, both are perfectly fine.
The Breitkopf engraving (also available on IMSLP) is IMO a model of fine engraving:
![pic-selected-230214-1325-44.png]( "pic-selected-230214-1325-44.png")
If you really want to learn about engraving then the only proper way to do it is to look at lots of scores. The 'high point' of traditional engraving, speaking very generally, is around 1880-1930 (ish), and it's a safe bet to look at scores from Breitkopf & Hartel from around that time, or indeed anything engraved by the firm of C.G. Röder. It's difficult in the later 20th century as the quality varies so widely. Henle still maintain a very high standard, but with most other publishers it's pot luck these days (and some of what gets put out there is truly horrendous).
If you really just want a book, most people would point you at Behind Bars but that's focused more on notation practice than on engraving per se. Most of what's been published on engraving (which is not much) is old and hard to get hold of these days. Your best bet is to get to know your local friendly engraver, if you can find one! (especially if they worked in the pre-computer age)
In reply to Muzgiz engraving around this… by oktophonie
Thank you very much for your advice and valuable opinion. I'll certainly pay more attention to Breitkopf & Hartel and C.G. Röder from now on.
I don't know if anyone shares this experience with me - I always struggle to read digitally created ensemble mscz on a computer screen, when number of staffs > ~10.
I'm unable to simultaneously see all staffs vertically on one screen and read individual note's pitch . I need to constantly, using Ctrl+mouse wheel, zoom in to read a pitch and then zoom out to see orchestration, which makes reading along with recordings quite painful.
As a result, I resort to and soon adapt to searching scanned pdf online instead, as they often offer better illegibility. Even with the prevalence of bad reproduction and on top of it bad scanning quality and image compression, i can read everything correctly with a surprisingly low magnification, as shown by images from last post. Do you feel the same on your screen?
I assumed the problem might be improved with a better and more educated engraving settings inside the now versatile musescore, as i recall a long time ago I presented my proudly "fully justified" fiction-book-style article to my typography fanatic friend and was given a lecture on fonttype and spacing and kerning which help me improve intelligibility a lot, and also made me appreciate the power of engraving and the work of typesetting business as a whole greatly.
Yes books like Behind Bars unfortunately do not really address this particular aspect. I also do not get that book title, does it not instead make a perfect title for the definitive survival guide written by an inmate? or some kind of BLM awareness pamphlet? Is there a notation related pun I missed?
In reply to Thank you very much for your… by msfp
Well, let's remember that music is often printed at a very small size, as we need to fit a lot of information into a limited space, especially with larger instrumentations. It's not uncommon to have a stave size as small as, say ~3.5mm, which is about the same as the body height of text at 10pt, and into that space we have to fit a whole stave's worth of information and detail.
And music on paper is normally printed at high resolution - 600dpi at a minimum (should really be 1200dpi, but publishers are cheap these days) - whereas even a 24" 4K monitor has a pixel density of 180ppi.
In other words, it's always a compromise viewing music on a screen, and the challenge it poses isn't necessarily due to the engraving. A large (21" or more) 4K monitor makes it possible to read all but the densest orchestral scores on a screen; it's possible even on a a smaller screen, such as a laptop or tablet, if the resolution is high enough.
It shouldn't really follow that MuseScore notation should be any harder to read than a scan, in the same circumstances. The idea about the default settings (and the design of the default font, Leland) is that they should make things legible, at least, in a wide range of circumstances. If you're talking about viewing score on musescore.com, then yes, the fact that it doesn't actually let you zoom in is certainly an issue...
"Behind bars" is indeed a notation pun ('bar' is 'measure' in UK English).
In reply to Well, let's remember that… by oktophonie
The German translation of it is a pun too: "Hals über Kopf", which is "stem over head", but really means "head over heels"
In reply to The German translation of it… by Jojo-Schmitz
I see, the dpi info makes sense and it's useful, thank you. What I really need is a high res high dpi screen. Well desperate times calls for ...