Category 2. Coordinate Spacing
Ordinarily, signs representing the articulation of ornaments can simply be placed above the note to which they pertain. The area requiring the sign can become very congested when additional information is required.
In Ex. #8, we find a turn sign, a trill sign, and a natural sign (to indicate that in executing the turn the B flat of the key signature should be ignored) placed under the slur covering the first group of notes. Other ornament signs, grace notes, articulation marks, triplet numerals, and dynamics markings also must be accommodated in this example.
Ornamentation creates the need for a seemingly endless roster of special signs. No notation system currently in use contains a full roster of all known signs for ornaments, since there is no agreement as to how many items such a list would contain. More than 200 signs are found in French music of c. 1700-1750.
Ex. #8. C. P. E. Bach: "La Buchholtz." This illustration was produced by Philip Hazel using Philip's Music Scribe. It appeared in Computing in Musicology 5 (1989), 82.
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