Re: phrase marks ending on tied notes: first vs last?

[Valentin Petzel]

Hello Jeff,

as far as I know it is generally accepted to end a slur on the second tied 
note. There are and have been strong voices against ending a slur on the first 
tied note, but then again there are many examples of it happening (e.g. 
Beethoven likes to do this a lot).

In some cases ending a slur on the first note of a tie can avoid awkward slur 
configurations and save space, especially if you’ve got many slurs (but this 
usually matters more for regular legato slurs). So in the end it is matter of 
a) house style and b) what looks good. But generally ending on the second tied 
note should be a reasonable and generally accepted default unless by some 
complicated configuration it takes too much space.

Of course one might make a point that a phrasing slur should encompass all the 
notes it spans, since it is used to group a whole phrase, which would rather 
speak for second tied note. Your first example is so short that I do not 
perceive this a phrasing slur, I’d interpret that as a regular legato slur. If 
you make the first example longer to turn it into something more phraselike as 
in the appended file you’ll see that the first tied note approach looks really 
weird in such cases.

Cheers,
Valentin

Am Donnerstag, 5. Mai 2022, 01:30:59 CEST schrieb Jeff Olson:
> Just curious whether other users have wrestled with this choice or have
> strong preferences.
> 
> At the recommendation of my reviewer, I'm adding phrase marks \(...\) to
> hundreds of simple sight reading exercises, to make them more readable. 
> While doing so, I caught myself sometimes ending the phrase on the first
> note of a tied pair, and at other times going all the way to the last
> note of the tie.  My reviewer had no preference, but in the interest of
> uniformity I went back and started doing them all the same way (phrasing
> to the last of the tied notes).  But I didn't always like the results.
> 
> The attached example (MWE-phrasing-to-ties.png) shows excerpts from two
> cases where my eye preferred doing it differently (first staff).  The
> second staff shows the opposite in each case, which I don't prefer. 
> (The excerpts are from Olcott: My Wild Irish Rose and Waldteufel: España
> Waltz, but the originals are generally unhelpful re phrase marks: I'm
> making exercises, not urtexts, after all).
> 
> Perhaps my issue is the visual interference between the phrase curve and
> the tie curve when they're both on top.  It just looks more busy, more
> complicated in such cases. I know I can force them to avoid each other
> (one up, one down, or more space), but I'd like to use the same simple
> source again in another octave, where the collisions could be
> different.  And I've got hundreds to do, so it has to be easy.
> 
> I can imagine that the target instrument might influence this choice.  A
> guitarist might prefer ending on the first, since they have little
> influence after the note is played; while a clarinetist or vocalist
> might prefer ending on the last, since they can't breathe until it's
> done.  My work is currently for guitar, and there are no lyrics involved.
> 
> So do people have rigid rules on phrasing, or just play it by ear?  What
> would Elaine Gould do?
> 
> Discussion is invited.
> 
> Jeff

MWE-phrasing-to-ties.pdf
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