Re: Default beaming for 3/4

[David Kastrup]

Reinhold Kainhofer <address@hidden> writes:

> Am Freitag, 26. August 2011, 15:12:16 schrieb David Kastrup:
>> Note that this would not agree with Gould.  Paraphrasing the gut rule I
>> apply here, this would likely be something like
>> 
>>   An off-beat can be beamed to the next group if its on-beat is not
>>   explicitly present.
>
> The problem is that the start of a beam somehow indicates a slight
> accent (not strictly), like the third quarter in a 4/4 measure.

An unmotivated beam of its own, like in r4. c8 c[ c] gives a stronger
visual accent to the first, off-beat note of an upbeat phrase than
r4. c8[ c c] would.  You could also argue that if the composer _wanted_
that kind of accent awareness, he would have written r4 r8 c8 c[ c] in
the first place (or c4~ c8 c c[ c]).

> If you beam c4. c8[ c c] the actually "accented" note (the middle c8)
> is in the middle of the beam, and the first c8 would be played
> slightly accented.

When we are talking about 3/4, runs of quavers are usually not given
much explicit accent, which is why whole measures of them are usually
beamed per-measure.  And it would be particularly ugly to have a
3-quaver upbeat get a stress on the second quaver, instead the execution
usually consists of a linear crescendo culminating in the first beat of
the following measure.

-- 
David Kastrup