Interesting Melody
Does anyone have an idea as to what this is?
Are there invisible rests on the possible second voice on the bottom? I thought at first this would be a cross-staff beam, but it's on the same staff....
... or is it just a different way of writing this?
Comments
In general it is just a a different way of writing it.I see it very often in baroque manuscripts, I assume it was a way to void long stems, for example, imagine trying to write that line by hand with all the stems in the same direction, it would be easier to read if you write it like in the picture you attached.
I said in general because sometimes that type of writing does seem to suggest a second voice, although its not explicit it does make you treat it or see it differently.
And sometimes you actually find voices with "invisible rests", but most of the time the notes are aligned with the main voice so you know when to play it.
In reply to In general it is just a a by Eduardo Palacios
Thanks for the help, I think I will interpret it as one voice unless I need to change it!
Here are some examples :)
You don't need multiple voices, just double click the beam and drag the handles. Although I think you'll find that with actual typeset beams, they are generally thicker than those hand-drawn ones and three beams wouldn't really fit between notes only an octave apart. So you'd be better off just notating this the standard way, and only use the between-the-notes approach when it actually helps.
In reply to You don't need multiple by Marc Sabatella
Also, if you imitate the handwritten example on Musescore it will look as if the note heads are improperly placed horizontally, making the music unnecessarily hard to read. This is because the stems attach sideways to the heads, on the right if upwards from the head and on the left if downwards. So the stems confuse the picture for the eyes. In handwriting the writer will instinctively find the compromise solution that will look right (I suppose this could be implemented and might be useful in a limited set of circumstances--I am thinking about cross staff situations in piano parts).
In reply to You don't need multiple by Marc Sabatella
Also, if you imitate the handwritten example on Musescore it will look as if the note heads are improperly placed horizontally, making the music unnecessarily hard to read. This is because the stems attach sideways to the heads, on the right if upwards from the head and on the left if downwards. So the stems confuse the picture for the eyes. In handwriting the writer will instinctively find the compromise solution that will look right (I suppose this could be implemented and might be useful in a limited set of circumstances--I am thinking about cross staff situations in piano parts).
That is, as others have mentioned, a single line of music, not a multi-voiced staff. What you see in that MS was the standard way of notating music in the 18th century. Copyists (then as now) were paid by the page, so speed was of the essence. Silly as it sounds, it is marginally faster to draw shorter stems than longer ones, and at that time it was quite common for music copyists to beam groups in this way.
Unless you are trying to reproduce a historical version of the score, it would be incorrect to use that style today. While professionals experienced in the Baroque repertoire would be familiar with this style of notation, most of today's students and amateurs would find it confusing and difficult to read.