Piano concerto Nr. 1 d-minor, 1st movement

Sheet music via Youtube-link.

P.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLTQODnqA1s&feature=context&context=C48add6dADvjVQa1PpcFPNmGJAnbF6ESkfFfAL7foUx9DWyJ9VOKc=

Hello Peter

Thanks for sharing.

Just listened to the whole concerto. Well written!!!
Will see what I can do about a live performance in the USA. Do you have the orchestral parts ready?

Thanks Avguste,

you know all the three movements already. It would be great to hear a live recording. I can adjust the score according to the size of available orchestra.

Peter

Peter,
The string section (and the conductor) is going to look at you with confusion at bars 113-116 in 6/8 time. You may want to re-write those bars.

Why do you say that? Surely you don't think string players and conductors, unlike flautists, tend to be a bit dim?
As you are well aware, there is nothing unusual about jumping back and forth between 3/4 and 6/8 (with the underlying 1/8 pulse remaining constant) without explicitly changing the time signature, and note how in the following four bars the flute is expected to play 3/4 while the strings are in 6/8.
Admittedly it does look a bit odd for the first few bars after a time change to 6/8 to be in 3/4, but any orchestral musician, let alone conductor, who is actually confused by this might like to consider switching to a less cerebral pursuit.
In this instance I would expect the conductor to beat these first 4 bars in 3, and change to beating in 2 from the 5th bar.

Rainer I'm surprised you replied this way, for certainly you know that there is a proper way to notate such a hemiola. You can't just ignore the 6/8 meter and write 3/4 music en mass (i.e. not a sesqui-rhythm). You have to write 6/8 meter that sounds like 3/4. Conductors rarely direct rhythms, they usually direct meters. To spell it out, this should be written with a 1/4 note, followed by two tied 8th notes, followed by a 1/4 note. This way the 6/8 meter is reflected despite the 3/4 sound. I suspect this may be a software limitation, the machine only knowing duration and reducing it to the least common denominator so-to-speak, but musically, it is unclear and IMO incorrect. (Regarding the flutes you mention, I may not have seen other instances or what you're talking about).

Some examples from Brahms (the master of hemiola and sesqui-rhythms) would be helpful.
The casual observer might say "Brahms writes three 1/4 notes in 6/8 time in the opening lines and frequently throughout his Capriccio in C# minor, Op 76, No 5." BUT, he ALSO simultaneously writes a clear stream of six 8th notes too, providing the context of 6/8. Note too how the LH maintains command of 6/8, causing this to really be a sesqui-rhythm. The proper way to notate the hemiola is exemplified in his finale to his first Sonata, Op.1, wherein he notates in 9/8 meter, sounds that are 1/2 note and dotted-1/4 note in length with tied 8th notes and tied 1/4-to-8th, thereby maintaining the indicated 9/8 meter. Or again in the opening solo section of the Adagio (2nd) movement in 6/4 time of his first piano concerto, where the second melody (treble) sound is notated as tied 1/4 notes rather than a half-note, but even there it still would have been clear if he had written a 1/2 note due to the presence of all the 1/4 notes underneath -- but he went through the added effort of writing tied 1/4 notes for clarity.

Hear me Peter. Don't go to the dark side!

No, you don't have to. Sometimes it would even be wrong to do so, because it would no longer mean the same thing, it wouldn't in general even sound the same, as I explain below.
I agree, but there are of course exceptions, as the words "rarely" and "usually" admit. Usually 6/8 would be beaten in 2. But you would not beat a pattern which nobody is playing. Another exception is where there is no unique meter present. Different sections of the orchestra may have different time signatures at the same time. In such cases a conductor will probably beat whatever will most help those who need help most.
But that doesn't have a 3/4 sound, because the dynamic emphasis is not the same. In 3/4, the first beat of the bar is the heaviest, with the other two being lighter than the first but roughly equal to each other: DUM-Dum-Dum (or if there are 8ths present it would sound DUM-da-Dum-da-Dum-da). Contrast this to 6/8, where the first (dotted quarter note) beat is again heavier than the other, and if 8ths are included, we get: DUM-da-da-Dum-da-da. Now tie these pairwise, and you get DUM-Dum-dum, that is to say the second rhythmic element receives significantly more weight (because it "inherits" the accent which now cannot happen in its proper place) than the third (because there is no accent for it to inherit). Specifically the weight difference between the second and third elements is greater with tied 6/8 than with 3/4.
I only mentioned the flute because you said the strings and conductor would be confused by bars 113 to 116, but did not add that the flute might be confused by what begins in bar 117.
You make Brahms out to be a paragon of clarity. He's not above being a bit of a rogue himself in that department. In a situation where anyone else would write a quarter note tied to an eighth, he happily writes a dotted quarter, and this even if the tie in question goes across a bar line. What he gives us is the note (or it might be a chord) just before the bar line, and then the first thing in the next bar is the dot(s) belonging to the aforementioned note (or chord). Apart from being confusing as hell to someone seeing this notational quirk for the first time, until one eventually works out what the devil it means, it also looks really odd because the dots are of necessity at quite some distance from the notes to which they belong, and don't trigger one's trained visual pattern matching mechanism, which is accustomed to dotted notes having their dots right next to them. I suspect he first did it as a joke, then liked it so much that he did it a few more times elsewhere. If you haven't come across this, I'm sorry but I can't now remember where specifically I've seen this.