Bach, beams, and benchmarks

[Chad Linsley]

Hi all,

I’m by no means a seasoned Lilypond pro but I’ve been exploring how the program handles beams. In the essay, the 1950 Barenreiter Bach cello suite edition is held up as a benchmark of high quality engraving. Seeing this really helps the user understand why Lilypond’s default slurs are shaped the way they are (not overly curvaceous). However, when I entered the first few systems, the beaming was much steeper than in the Barenreiter. It only started looking closer to it when I put a blank measure on the end (three measures to system = tighter spacing). I then tried the various tweaking parameters for beams which worked fine on a beam-to-beam basis. What I’m curious about is whether or not Lilypond can be set to produce beaming closer to the Barenreiter without quite as much intervention. For example, the damping factor didn’t respond very sensitively when I tried using decimal points. 

Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks!

C