How to Write Music Part 2

(Pianists will recall a modern instance, so far as the dot is concerned, in a little exercise in C major of Czerny's.)

The practice cannot have been due to the non-invention of the "tie" or "bind." For though the first use of this is difficult to trace, clear instances, in the form of a bracket, ?, occur in Morley's _Practical Music_, published in 1597.

Rests.

15.--Rests, especially whole note rests, when used for a whole measure, are still very often illogically placed in the _middle_ of the s.p.a.ce they represent. This has been defended on the ground that they represent silence or _inaction_, and that therefore no error can arise from their appearance being deferred. But a performer should be conscious of the action _or inaction_ of every voice or part. If there be a seeming vacuum or hiatus, how is he to know whether it is a note or rest which has been omitted? If he concludes, from the absence of any note, that a rest is intended, he can only _guess_ how long it will prove to be when it does come. Therefore, in the writer's opinion, rests should be located on the same principle as notes. If it be not a profanation to say so, since the example is from Bach, the rest in Fig. 12 would have been better placed at the beginning of the measure. Let a sheet of paper be held over the right half of the measure, and though the player will be able to begin, he will not know in how many parts the piece is written.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 12.]

16.--In open score, that is, in writing a single melody or part on one stave, it is usual to make whole note rests below the fourth line, and half note rests above the third. Quarter note rests should be written exactly in the middle of the stave. The crook of eighth note rests, and the upper crook of shorter rests, is generally placed in the third s.p.a.ce, in the absence of any reason to the contrary. The stems of rests are, in ma.n.u.script music especially, better slanted somewhat. This helps to distinguish them from the stems of notes--in rapidly written ma.n.u.script a not unimportant thing!

17.--There are two forms of quarter note rest, the English, which is like the eighth note rest but turned to the right-hand, and the German, which is somewhat difficult to describe. The German is far the better of the two as being much more distinct from the eighth note rest. It is, however, harder to write, and of the slightly varying forms, perhaps the easiest is that with a crook at each end of a very oblique stem and which is thus very much like a reversed letter Z (see the first example in Fig. 13).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 13. Ma.n.u.script forms of German quarter note rest.]

18.--In short score, that is, in writing two or more parts or voices on one stave, the rests are placed, not only in the top or bottom s.p.a.ce of the stave as may best indicate to which part they apply, but above and below it, involving, in the case of whole note and half note rests, the use of a leger-line (see b, Fig. 14). This is partly because _the stems of all rests are turned down_, and therefore cannot be made, as the stems of notes can, to indicate the part they belong to by the direction taken. This, therefore, has to be shown by their position on, or off, the stave (see Fig. 14).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 14. J. S. Bach.]

It will be seen that the lower eighth note rest in the first example belongs to the same part as the following sixteenth note rest, though by no means on a line with it.

19.--In modern piano music which is not of a strictly part-writing character, rests often represent the absence, not of a part or voice, _but of the hand_. If the notes, though representing as many parts as the piece can be supposed to possess, are all to be played by one hand, rests are employed to represent the absence of the other.

And in music which _is_ of a part-writing character, though the parts are _incomplete_, rests are often _not_ employed if both hands are engaged (see Fig. 3, c, ba.s.s clef, supposing it to be of more than two parts).

Bach rarely, if ever, employed rests to represent the hand; with him they always represent a voice. Thus in a melodic or one-part pa.s.sage divided between the hands, each playing alternate groups, he used no rests to represent the absent hand. These, appearing simultaneously with the notes, would have implied a second part. With him rests represent a living, though absent, voice; in modern usage they frequently represent, not music, but the way of playing it. See Fig. 15, the first half of which is in _two_ parts, therefore rests represent the thirty-second note silences; and the second half of which is in _one_ part, therefore no rests are employed though only one hand is engaged at a time. It is from a B flat Prelude in Bach's _Well-tempered Clavier_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 15.]

Dots.

20.--Dots are used in music for three purposes: (1) as repeat marks, (2) to indicate semi-staccato, (3) to prolong a note one half. As repeat marks, they may be placed in each of the four s.p.a.ces of the stave (which in the writer's opinion is the better plan, as being less liable to confusion with time-dots), or in the second and third s.p.a.ces only, in accordance with a modern custom. _Staccato_ dots and _staccatissimo_ dashes, when two parts are being written on one stave, should be placed below the note if applying to the lower part, and above if applying to the higher. In the case of open score (a single part on one stave), they are best placed on the side opposite the stem.

Time-dots, or those which prolong a note one half, if applied to a note in a s.p.a.ce, should be in the same s.p.a.ce as the note; if applied to a note on a line they should be placed in the s.p.a.ce above, if the next note of the part is higher, and in the s.p.a.ce below if it is lower. The importance of this usage is often overlooked. If it cannot be called a rule, it is high time it was made one! When two parts are written on one stave, and a note is doubled, having two stems, one up and the other down, to indicate this, and in one part it is dotted, and in the other not, it is impossible, apart from this rule, to tell which part has the note dotted and which not (except, of course, from the context, which may expose any mistake). The following example from Henry Smart's "Festive March in D," for the organ, appears to contain two dotted half notes. It would probably be so read by anyone playing the pa.s.sage at sight. The context shows that it is the eighth note not the half note which is intended to be dotted. All the dots except that to the last note but one should have been in the s.p.a.ce _below_ the note, where this is on a line.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 16.]

Logic would suggest that where a doubled, that is a two-stemmed, note is dotted in both parts or voices, _two_ dots should follow one above the other. This would, however, be awkward when the note was in a s.p.a.ce; and also when it was on a line, if, as in the last group above, _both_ voices proceeded to a lower note (or both to a higher). For according to the rule here being considered, both dots would have to be in the s.p.a.ce below (or above).

There is another slight inaccuracy in the above example which will be noticed later on. Let the tyro try and find it!

21.--As regards distance from the note they prolong, time-dots may be written either _immediately_ after such note, as in Fig. 16, or in the part of the measure with which they synchronize, as in the following excerpt from Sterndale Bennett's piano study "The Lake."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 17.]

Elsewhere throughout the same study the composer has placed dots immediately after the note they prolong. Here, therefore, he seems to have antic.i.p.ated the objection that he was dotting _un_-accented notes (see "Notation of Rhythm," Par. 9), and to refute it by showing that there are in reality two series of accents in each measure, at cross purposes with each other, that, indeed, the alto, and tenor measures are an eighth note behind the treble, though they could not be written with separate bar-lines. This is clear when the whole pa.s.sage is seen.

Observe that the dot to the last note of a measure is placed at the beginning of the next, to make the overlapping clear to the eye. (Also that the dots to the last alto and tenor quarter notes are placed not in the s.p.a.ce next, but in the s.p.a.ce next-but-one higher than the note they prolong.) Dots are not infrequently placed thus--that is, in or near the part of the measure with which they synchronize--apart from any such purpose as that just explained.

The dot made its first appearance in music about A.D. 1300. Sometimes it had a tail ("_punctus caudatus_") and looked not unlike an inverted comma. It did not, however, acquire its present meaning till about a century later.

Stems.

22.--There is no rule as to the length of stems, and they vary greatly.

The stems in a single group of notes are as often as not of different lengths, according to the position of the notes and the direction taken by the hook. A common fault is to make them too short, especially when the four hooks of a sixty-fourth note have to be added. This, however, is generally the result of a badly directed hook (see a, Fig. 18).

23.--As to the _direction_ they take there is a definite rule. In open score (when one part only is being written on a stave), the stems of notes _above_ the middle line should be turned _down_, the stems of those _below_ the middle line should be turned _up_ (see b, Fig. 18).

The object of this is to keep the stems within the stave and prevent their sprawling above or below. The ill-equipped writer betrays himself by nothing more often than by sprawling stems.

The stems in a group of notes are generally turned according to the direction of the first note, or the majority. In a group containing a wide skip they are often turned individually according to the rule, involving opposite directions, the hook being drawn between them (see c, Fig. 18).

Five exceptions are common: (1) The stem of a grace note is almost invariably turned upwards, though according to Dr. Hullah it should be turned in the direction contrary to that of the stem of the princ.i.p.al note, for the sake of greater distinctness (see d, Fig. 18). In "copy"

for the printer grace-notes are best written in red ink. (2) In piano music when a single part, or row of notes, is to be divided between the hands, one playing one group and the other the next, the stems of the right-hand notes are turned up, and those of the left down (see Fig. 15, latter half of measure). (3) Similarly in some organ music, especially that printed in Germany, pedal notes which are to be played by the right foot have the stems turned up, those by the left, down. (4) In vocal music, when a subsequent verse, though having the same notes, requires different time-values from the first verse, or a translation requires different time-values from the original language, the time-values required by one verse or language have the stems of the notes turned up, those required by the other down (see e, Fig. 18, from Molique's oratorio "Abraham"). (5) In music written on two staves, when the notes of a single group skip from one stave to the other, the hook is placed between the staves, and the stems of the notes on the lower stave are turned up, and of those on the upper stave down, irrespective of their relation to the middle line of the stave (see f, Fig. 18, from the "Moonlight" Sonata).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 18.]

24.--In short score, that is when two parts have to be written on one stave, the stems belonging to the upper part should be turned upwards, and those to the lower downwards. Only by this means can the course of the parts be made clear to the eye. When the parts cross, the rule must be strictly adhered to: the note belonging to the upper _part_, not the _upper note_, must have the upward stem. To make quite clear which note each stem belongs to, it is well in this case to make the notes a little less close together than they otherwise would be (see a, Fig. 19, a well-known case from a chant by Sir John Goss, where the tenor goes below the ba.s.s). Sometimes _more_ than two parts are written on one stave; in this case the stems of two parts must be turned the same way, and considerable ingenuity is required to make the course of the parts clear. Usually the middle part varies in the direction of its stems.

Simultaneous notes are generally written not quite in a line with each other, to allow of separate stems: the stems are generally rather short, so as not to run into each other, and the hooks of simultaneous eighths and shorter notes do not concur. Two measures from Bach's piano fugues will ill.u.s.trate these points (b and c, Fig. 19).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 19.]

25.--The stems of rests are always turned downwards.

26.--There is also a definite rule as to the _side_ of a note at which the stem should be placed: stems turned upwards should be at the right-hand side of the note-head, those downwards, at the left. This rule is observed less in the case of half notes than of shorter notes--for what reason the writer is unable to say.