Tremolo question

• May 21, 2016 - 09:56

Hello!

I found the following tremolo in a score (see picture). The time signature is a 4/4 common time and the tremolo is between two crotchet notes. My question here is: In my score there is a beam between the crotchet notes and above there are two tremolo lines. Does that mean that this is a 16th tremolo (because there are two tremolo lines) or is this a 32nd tremolo (because between crotchet notes is no beam, so the additional beam counts as the third tremolo line)?

Any idea what is correct?

Best,
Tobias

Attachment Size
Tremolo.jpg 55.28 KB

Comments

I'm not sure that it's exactly either 16th or 32nd, just play a tremolo fairly fast and that sounds right. If it were a slow tempo I'd err towards the 32nd and if the tempo was fast then more towards the 16th. If you can find a few performances of the piece on YouTube it might help you decide.

Personally, I would count it as 32nds. This is due to another example that I was working on transcribing that had the exact same problem- de Falla's Fantasia Baetica. Same notation, except several tremolos are preceded by 32nd notes playing out the tremolo directly. In some cases the same measure would have both "barred tremolos" and "unbarred tremolos," with the unbarred being a 32nd tremolo. So, I would say that they're 32nds.

In reply to by LuuBluum

Thanks for your thoughts! In fact in my score (a work from around 1915 - so fits to your experiences with the de Falla) all tremolos are barred and all have just one bar line no matter if they are crotchets, quaver or semiquaver! And all have two tremolo bars. So what do you think does this lead to? That the beam between the tremolo notes is just to show the connection of the two notes or to be counted with the two tremolo lines?

In reply to by violinconcerto

I think that this is a good example of why I would consider them to be 32nds:
tremolo.png

As you can tell, there is a series of 32nd nodes leading into the barred tremolo, which then leads into a 32-length unbarred tremolo. To make this more clear as to why it would also pertain to your specific example, here's another from the same piece:

tremolo2.png

Again, 32nd notes leading into the tremolo. It wouldn't make sense if the tremolos were of any other length.

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