Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Notation question (weird rests)

255,

Everything, including the rests, up to now required a (implicit) TRIPLET interpretation to make it work.

And you now suddenly interpret that single double dotted half note as a NON-triplet. This is not consistent.

Also, that single eight note that you think to see at the end of the bar IS NOT AN EIGHT NOTE. It's an eight note INSIDE A TRIPLET, which is therefore shorter.

So even in your interpretation it does not add up.

>Mathematics and music notation softwares prove that I'm right.

You only proved garbage in, garbage out :p

In other parts of the score I can see multiple voices where voice 1 is inside triplets while voice 2 is not. I also see measures where the first two beats are triplets and the last two beats are not. If you want I'll make more screenshots.
This is just another measure with this same particularity, it's just a bit more confusing.


No, only if you want to believe that all the 4 beats are in a triplet. But it's perfectly possible and legal, in music notation, that some beats are represented as a triplet and some other beats are not (in this case the last one).
We may look at the score in a different view, but my view is not more inconsistent than yours. Actually, your view doesn't make the second voice conclude (close, fill) correctly, while mine is ok with the original score.

You wrote:

That's true but not for all the beats. That's the point. If you believe that the last beat is a triplet, then why the voice with the double-dotted half note doesn't have a rest at the end?
Just answer this question.

Also, very important and forgot to say, you can see that in the RH staff all the notes have the stem UP, while the last eighth notes have the stem down, to tell us that they're part of the second voice.


Anyway, let's try it with images; let's suppose that as you say, the last beat is inside a triplet; here is how the measure will look like, with two different interpretations of the double dotted half note:





Link to larger image


These images are what the measure will look like if, as you said, all the beats are inside triplets.
Since as you can see they are inconsistent with the original score, the only possible correct interpretation is the one where the last beat is NOT a triplet:



In this version, sure, the eighth notes are not aligned vertically as they are in the original score, but it's more probable that the original score has an error in the alignment instead of missing rests.

Anyway, the stems of the voices make it pretty obvious to me.

I would like to listen to other opinions though, we are just bringing grist to one's mill.

Any other expert here?

I agree that this is ambiguous. However, missing rests are not an uncommon occurrence in scores, so that by itself doesn't tell me too much. In Sibelius, which is my notation program of choice, you can add a rest to fill out the count and then tell Sibelius to hide it when it renders the score for display if you think the performer doesn't need it or it makes the score look too messy. For instance, in this measure the LH starts in two voices on the last quaver of the measure, but there is only one set of rests leading up to this.

One reason for supposing that the last quaver in the RH is part of a triplet is that the exact same motive is repeated in the following measures with the stems still down but no second voice on the staff (these measures haven't been posted, but I located the pdf of the full score to check the context). In those cases, it is clear that the rhythm is triplets throughout the measure. Those measures also show the continuation of the second voice in the bass as a series of tied and sometimes dotted crochets, but everything, including that sustained voice, still lines up in the triplet pattern.

In the end, I lean toward the triplet for the last beat in the RH with the sustained B just leading up to that (just like the sustained bass voice in the next measures), but I can still see it as debatable. This illustrates to me that, despite the apparent precision forced on us by our software, notation is still something of an ambiguous (and evolving) art. The rules were often bent by hand engravers in the old days to fit their notion of what the performer needed and what looked good on the page. In the end, you have to interpret the notation musically and not just mechanically.

Thanks for this post.

>That's true but not for all the beats. That's the point. If you believe that the last beat is a triplet, then why the voice with the double-dotted half note doesn't have a rest at the end? Just answer this question.

You're just repeating my argument why that double dotted note is strange.

I maintain that it's inconsistent to interpret the last two notes different than all the others, even though their shape exactly matches all the other ones. The composer should really have done something extra if he wanted to jump out of that implicit pattern at this point. I believe more in a missing rest. The alignment reinforces this interpretation.

Finally, in your version (the last picture with the stem down) the TOP voice is missing a rest.

No, it's not. Because that's not a triplet. I know that you support the idea that it's a triplet (and I'm about to be convinced) but in that example that's not a triplet so the measure fills up correctly: 3 beats in triplet style and a last beat (the fourth) in non-triplet style, filled with a quarter note (exact length of one beat).

Apart this, your considerations make sense anyway, so no problems.


EDIT
Ok, reading again packa's message I'm now convinced that you all are right, because the next measures are basically the same melody. Six measures almost equal, so yes, there's no reason why those quavers should be played slightly before (as in the non-triplet version).
So it's a missing rest.
I was trying to "decode" that measure without realizing that the next measures have the same pattern even in the bass. As packa said that B is the "bass melody" so it makes sense that it is similar to the next bass lines:



So, as for the LH, it makes sense that also the RH staff keeps consistent with the next measures.

Thanks all for the patience.


EDIT 2
Looking at the "accused" measure now, it seems reasonably that the rest is missing: it will just confuse the player, since the rest is ok with the second voice but it will confuse the first voice pattern.

EDIT 3
Or, option 2, since the missing rest is a 1/8 rest, the composer/transcriber thought that the second voice could "go on and link" with the last quavers of the first voice.
That's wrong, but it may be considered an error as well as a trick to simplify the reading.

EDIT 4
Keep thinking about it, I would say there is yet another option: the same explanation for the dots in the LH staff, which was my initial question actually (not casually); that double dotted half note is just meant to fill everything till the last quavers in the triplet, even if metrically and mathematically that is not correct. As for the weird rests in the LH staff. Problem solved, I would say.

I had one more thought on interpreting the notation in this troublesome measure:



If we assume that the second voice moves cross staff to be continued in the lower staff for the next few measures, then we are free to make a triplet for the RH melody. This structure also bears some similarity to what happens in the next few measures as a third voice is added in the LH that follows the same pattern as our cross staff voice in this measure.

Of course, the engraver could have easily added the cross staff notation that I am suggesting if this were the intent. But it eliminates the problem of the missing rest, although it still means that the duration of the double dotted half note is a bit unclear. Even so, the held B could not have been easily notated as a series of tied quarter notes like the low voice in the following measures. It would simply be too ugly to add those additional notes in the middle of the RH melody, whereas it's clearer in the following measures where the tied quarter notes can move to a different part of the staff.

This may be my last post on this topic. My head hurts, and I'm running out of ideas.

I think that you've provided the best possible solution.

>but in that example that's not a triplet so the measure fills up correctly

Ah yes that's right in your interpretation. My mistake