Parts from small staffs are small

• Nov 15, 2020 - 02:24

I have a violin sonata. Traditionally the violin part is small in such scores (in all chamber music with piano). The extracted violin part should however be in regular size, not on small staff. In version 3.5.2 the violin part is extracted with small staves.

This is bug that needs to be corrected.

BTW in such music the pianist plays from the score (hence the small staves to save space) and there is no need to extract a piano part. Such "solo" parts went out of fashion around the middle of the 19th century.


Comments

If a staff is small in the score before you generate the part, it'd be small in the part, if you want it big there, just set it to big there. No bug, perfectly by design and on purpose. On part creation copy (almost) everything, after creation sync only content, but not layout

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

I understand. Having only recently started on version 3 I did not want to risk my score layout after having gotten it to look nice (it has lots of voices and complications so even Musescore 3 needs a lot of help with the layout). I deleted the title frame Musescore always adds when I create parts (it is a big score and I'll have a title page, so that frame has no use) and the frame was deleted in score AND parts on one click, that scared me away from more fiddling with the layout.

Anyway, I think one ought to change the design and make regular size staves the default for parts. I can't see a use for small staves in parts. Their only purpose is to be put on a stand (or on a tablet for those who have enough money) and read by a musician.

In reply to by SteveBlower

True. MuseScore can handle this smartly. If cutaway is selected then don't look at staff size. That way ossias (entered correctly) will remain small and parts will be large by default. The user always has the option to change this in the part.

One other thing. Someone recently asked about stemless not being propagated to the parts and Jojo's response (I think it was Jojo) was essentially that in general formatting is not in the parts by default. This is an exception that should not be made.

In reply to by mike320

After posting the suggestion I started thinking about ossia (should have done that first, shouldn't I?). Two things: In my experience ossia passages are much rarer than music for piano plus 1,2,3,4,5 plus instruments. A larger group ought to be accommodated before a smaller group.

Also: when you think about it, ossia is really complicated: I have seen cases in printed music with ossia in parts but not in the score as well as the other way round plus ossia in parts and score. While the case of the piano- plus situation is simple and straightforward.

In reply to by azumbrunn

Music for piano plus lots of instruments is common, yes, but small staves aren't usually used in those cases. Only in music for piano plus one instrument really. And ossia is more common than you might think - it's inon virtually every page of many editions of many solo piano pieces. It's also not the only case where you might want a staff small in a part. On the other hand, the ossia might well need to be in the part, but not the score, so that's something different still.

So the bottom line to me is, all options need to be supported. Changing the default is possible if there is widespread agreement and there is a clear way to override it as there is now. But the fact that as far as I know it has always been this way and it hasn't come up before that I can recall suggests maybe there isn't such a big consensus that the current default is not good.

In reply to by mike320

If it's possible to change the default at the time of part generation without affecting existing scores that may rely on the current behavior, that would be good to know, as it's the sort of thing that could then be considered for 3.6, if enough others speak up about wishing a change to the default.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I admit that I have knowledge only of the classical repertoire. But within that style small staves for the non piano instruments are the norm in performance editions of duos, trios, quartets and quintets at least. I just checked all editions of Brahms's three piano quartets on IMSLP. There is only one with equal size staves and that is an Eulenburg study score ("Taschenpartitur" = pocket score, the size of a postcard).

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