Notation clarity question for a conglomerate of accidentals
I have encountered the following slightly weird notation for three close-by notes intended to be taken together. However, in order to fit the sharp and double sharp accidental symbols at appropriate places, while keeping the key signature, that unusual (at least to me) split had to be drawn.
I wonder, how common is such notation in the first place, and if it is likely to be edited out / beautified somehow (how?) by an experienced editor. Is there a better way to write such a construct, while keeping clarity?
This is from Marc-André Hamelin's Cadenza for Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody.
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Typographer here.
First, remember that typography has the rule that it's functional and beautiful. If you can't have both, you aim at the first. And functional means that the player understands the notation. And once you play Liszt, you're probably not a novice and should get this.
Second, it's generally considered a crime to change the author's pitch notation, but this would be much better written as E## F## G#, or even F# G Ab.
This notation is orthodox, and at least common enough for an authority to mention it.
Gardner Read's "Music Notation," 2nd ed., p. 74, example 5-27 shows two instances of exactly this: a stem trifurcating to a cluster of three noteheads only a semitone apart, in his case E natural F natural F sharp, and D natural E flat E natural.
This is fairly standard notation. This is an "altered unison", a chord that includes two different variants of the same note (F-sharp and F-double-sharp in the example); there is no way to represent this with the conventional layout of a single stem. So one way or another, the stem has to be split -- here is a description from Steiner on the Dorico software.
Personally I think that the Liszt example is neater than the Dorico default, and in any event anyone sight-reading Marc-André Hamelin's attempt to make Liszt harder is not going to be a beginner.
It's not necessary to have three stems. The G# can share a stem with the F# or the Fx (as in your example's last two clusters, leaving the Fx or the F# to use a slanted stem. One way to position the stems is for the stem with more notes to be vertical and the other stem slanted enough to make room for the accidental. Another way is to slant both stems -- this means that they don't have to be slanted so much. The result is I think still ugly, because there are two stems, but not as ugly as having three stems.
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