Soler sonata remake complete (Surprise!)
Hello again. For those of you that were paying attention, I took some time off the MuseScore forums to figure out that trill thing from a work by the 18th century Spanish composer Antonio Soler. Luckily, I figured it out. The trills are close to, if not, exactly like Soler intended them to be.
The work is slightly different from the original in that it has an extra 20 measures that make the piece in complete sonata-allegro form.
When any of you get the chance, please take a look at it and/or play the completed work and tell me what you think of it.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Soler Sonata No 96 Mvt 2.mscz | 15.74 KB |
Comments
Back on Jan 19 you said:
"I'm so sorry man, but it just doesn't sound right to me. And I hate to burst your bubble here, but if I printed something like this and I or another person actually played this, I'm sure Antonio Soler would be turning over in his grave."
Obviously this Soler re-write project is a labor of love for you, but even after reading over your original thread back in the general discussions group about Soler trills, I still don't understand what your complaint is about MuseScore. Looking over the score you submitted, I would repeat the same line (above) back to you since nobody would want to play it the way it's written.
1. Trills have always been contentious and difficult to interpret considering how much they have changed over the hundreds of years they have been written. Coming from Baroque through Romantic and into today, the standard notation for a tr hasn't changed but geographic regions and eras would play them differently. Nowadays, most trills would be notated at the beginning of the score for how they should (or theoretically) be played and that is how you should approach this instead of writing a plethor of 16'th notes to imitate a trill.
2. Why did you score a piano piece with 3 staves? It looks more like an organ work. Why did you have to shift things around (up) whenver the bass line went to treble? Could you not keep the score on two staves and change the clef markings when needed?
Score writing issues aside, it is a nice piece to listen to. I've not had much exposure to Soler.
In reply to Scoring Soler by schepers
The reason I have three staves for this piece is because I don't know how to use two staves while replacing the bass clef with the treble clef in the middle of the piece (and vice-versa) when needed. MuseScore seems to want the whole piece to be consistent. Any possible solution to this?
In reply to Three staves explanation by Marcus2
All I did is drag the proper clef from the Clefs pallete onto the bar you want to change. Works in .963 and I'm sure it works in the pre 1.0 versions. I tested it with a simple melody and it shifted properly from bass to treble and back and forth.
In reply to All I did is drag the proper by schepers
I did what you told me. And attached to this post is the updated version.
In reply to Done. by Marcus2
Good work! At least now we have a standard two-stave score. Now onto other details...
You haven't responded to the trills issue yet. Either you are concerned about the way it plays back (possibly incorrectly) in MuseScore or you are considering my point about notating the ornaments only once. In another thread Chen Lung said that composers were too lazy to write out all the notes of the trill (something like that). While that might seem like an answer with some truth in it, its not. Since people of the era that the music was written in would know how to play the trills there was no point in notating them in detail or even explaining them. So the question remains, why are you so adverse to just marking the note(s) with a tr as is the accepted way?
Another detail, possibly related to your notation of trills, is how you notated the remaining tied notes. See bar 53-54 and 55-56 with the tied 16'th notes, Once again, no composer would write this way. The tied 32'nd notes in the end of bar 53 would be reduced to their largest note value, namely a 16'th tied to an eighth tied to another eighth in bar 54. This happens in many places. (Also, according to the online scores, the entire note through bar 53 and tied into the first eighth note of bar 54 is a single trill. Why have you notated it so that the trill ends earlier? What evidence do you have that the trill is played this way?)
Another incorrect use of tied notes starts in bar 30. The bottom note should be a half followed by a quarter. Use two voices (1 and 2) to notate these types of bars.
In reply to Now onto the tied notes by schepers
1. I was using another MIDI file (which is probably closest to the original) as a model for the type of trill first appearing in measures 53-54. This is my "evidence" that the trill is played this way.
2. If I were to mark those notes with a "tr" (trill) symbol, I don't think playback would play those notes in the form of a trill, which would make the passage sound a bit ugly when I think about how it should be played in my head.
3. As for the half and quarter notes in measure 30, I believe I will be able to change that, with some help. I don't quite know how to use the voices feature in MuseScore...
In reply to Yeah, but there are some problems here. by Marcus2
Concerning point 1, as has been mentioned before, whoever programmed the MIDI file to play back that way could easily be leading you down the wrong path. You will need to reference some texts on how Spanish Baroque ornamention was or should be played.
Putting points 1 and 2 together, I think the best response is that you are working with MuseScore expecting to hear back what you want to hear, but not realizing that it is the score (the visuals) that is the most important thing. If someone takes this score as is and prints it intending to play it, then the long-hand method of writing the trills is beyond annoying. Best to make a note somewhere on the score as to how they should be played (coming in, going out) and just use the TR symbol. Musescore will be a long time yet for good to accurate-sounding playback, esp ornaments and inflection. Don't be so concerned with "proper" playback that you forget that the score should still be presented in proper and acceptable form.
As for point 3, have you made any headway on using multiple voices to combine the bass notes into half/quarter pairs and separating the upper line harmony?
In reply to Still working on it? by schepers
"Concerning point 1, as has been mentioned before, whoever programmed the MIDI file to play back that way could easily be leading you down the wrong path."
Quite possible, though I haven't recognized such a statement from you before. I should do some more investigation into how the trill is actually played in recordings and the like.
"You will need to reference some texts on how Spanish Baroque ornamention was or should be played."
The work is Spanish Baroque? Spanish we should all accept, but Baroque? I don't think so. Antonio Soler was mostly a composer of the early Classical era, his works sounding scarcely of the Baroque style. While Spanish Baroque composers definitely did exist (i.e. Juan Cabanilles AKA "The Spanish Bach"), Soler barely qualifies into this group, actually. And if not, he doesn't qualify at all.
As for the sonata in question, it definitely sounds much more like what Mozart would compose than what Bach or Handel would. In other words, the sonata sounds much more Classical than Baroque for sure. Lol, the keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti sound somewhere in between Baroque and Classical (the early ones leaning Baroque (I suppose), the ones composed after that leaning Classical).
As for Spanish musical ornamentation of the mid to late 18th century, I very possibly will look into that when I have more free time.
"Putting points 1 and 2 together, I think the best response is that you are working with MuseScore expecting to hear back what you want to hear, but not realizing that it is the score (the visuals) that is the most important thing. If someone takes this score as is and prints it intending to play it, then the long-hand method of writing the trills is beyond annoying. Best to make a note somewhere on the score as to how they should be played (coming in, going out) and just use the TR symbol. Musescore will be a long time yet for good to accurate-sounding playback, esp ornaments and inflection. Don't be so concerned with "proper" playback that you forget that the score should still be presented in proper and acceptable form."
This argument makes a great point in regards to using the trill symbol rather than notating the trill. However, I disagree with the value the MuseScore developers place on playback. Playback can be used as a tool to create MIDI and other sound files. In my opinion, MuseScore has great potential to be redeveloped to become a great MIDI creator/editor as well as a creator of musical scores.
I know MuseScore was developed principally for creating and editing musical scores. But I don't think that means it should remain not as good in everything else. Apparently, the best and most recommended free MIDI creator/editor out there is Anvil Studio. Yet I find it a piece of crap: Anvil Studio automatically inserts rests when you enter or drag in notes, and you can't remove a rest without clearing both the treble and bass clefs. This does remove the rest in one clef, but any notes that were found in the opposite clef (occurring in the same section as the rest) are removed as well.
Before I discovered MuseScore, I unsuccessfully attempted using Anvil Studio to recreate the Soler sonata. Anvil Studio was very frustrating, and it was difficult to sequence notes correctly in a few measures, impossible when I reached measure 29. I soon decided to give up on Anvil Studio, and I promptly uninstalled it from my PC.
Sorry I had to make a long rant about my previous experience with the MIDI editor.
"As for point 3, have you made any headway on using multiple voices to combine the bass notes into half/quarter pairs and separating the upper line harmony?"
No, I haven't. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I don't know how to work with the multiple voices feature in MuseScore. Before you informed me of it, I thought multiple voices had to do with creating mock human vocals for something like an opera, oratorio, or cantata, lol.
I'm terribly sorry I made my replies (and this post) so long, but I don't know how else I could have done it.
In reply to Replies by Marcus2
I have found a harpsichord version of this sonata from Naxos. They seem to have released a multi-CD set of most/all Soler's sonatas and other keyboard works. You can certainly use it for comparison. I have uploaded it here:
http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~schepers/DOWNLOAD/Soler_Sonata96.mp3
In reply to Replies by Marcus2
I'm only going to comment on multiple voices. When you open MuseScore on your PC, you will see on the toolbar a blue # 1, a green # 2, a yellow-orange # 3, and a purple-pink # 4. Those are the different voices. To use them, simply select the measure that you would like to insert another voice. In this particular case you have a bass and harmony that need to be separated. Select your measure of choice, then select the green # 2. Now your Note Entry bar will change color. From there, simply write in your Bass or Harmony (it doesn't matter which one you choose to remain voice one and which you choose to make voice two). Adjust stem direction as needed to make it neat, and now you will have two "separate" rhythms being played in one stave, and they won't be connected as chords. Voila!
In reply to Voices by rj45
Oh, and by the way, Good work, it's not bad!
In reply to Oh, and by the way, Good by rj45
Hello,
I dont like the way you mark the trillls, because noone writes them so but:
if you want to make them audible with mscore, ok. Then mark them hidden, and on an other voice write the usual notation and mark it not playable. (It's a matter I had in french (my language) with someone who wanted to have the trills marked with tr above them and he ornament finishing the trill visible and playable : http://musescore.org/fr/node/9181, if you understand French)
By the way, at a certain time (in early French 1700s) the trills had no finishing ornament,
and it seems you play too quickly the trills as I can see from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiM8KKJSUc8 or your example, where the trills are straight with no finising ornament) an much slower than yours. (8ths notes, it seems (double croches)
Even when changing piano too harpsichord, the sound from mscore is very poor (no registers...) perhaps organ or Celesta...
Good work anyway...
In reply to other by Billard Sirakawa
I give my thanks to all you guys for your input and the links you've provided. I hope I will take another look at this stuff sometime soon. And by the way, I currently understand and speak only basic French.
In reply to Thank you all by Marcus2
I modified the fith measure :
The visual in Mscore is of medium quality, the PDF export is good.
1) Add the quarter note with a point D on the second voice
2) Add the TR sign on the D
3) make the bar begins at the next to last Sixty-fourth note
4) for 6 other notes ofthe trill, make each element of them invisible, Eventually make them smaller by Properies of the chord
5 ) Make the new D not playable by puting its velocity to 0
Good day (Here it is 14 PM on Sunday)
In reply to measure 5 by Billard Sirakawa
I'm so sorry I took so long to reply here. The last post here was almost 2 months ago! Anyway, I polished up my score as close as possible to your intentions, using multiple voices, though not using the trill sign since it messes up the beautiful sound of the piece.
My original intention to use MuseScore was primarily to create MIDI files, not create musical scores. I'm a novice game programmer, and I use MIDI files for my games. Well, here it is.
In reply to Now onto the tied notes by schepers
I must say that I was only joking about the ornament remark and don't want to discredit any wonderful composers :). I had never thought of them as being lazy.
I was trying to make light of the fact that it has unfortunately led to the uncertainty of the composer's intentions.
Marcus2 , thank you for this melody. It is pleasure to hear it.
In reply to Nice by DiAnna_
Thank you, DiAnna. I'm glad you liked listening to the Soler sonata. I wish MuseScore could be a great program for creating MIDI files, as well as one for creating musical scores. Anvil Studio sucked when I tried remaking the Soler sonata there. I'm off to the feature request forum.