Fig. 40.
Accidentals.
[51.]—The necessity for inserting accidentals in a part-copy which may not appear in a short-score, has just been pointed out. Yet the musical Hercules is beset with a Charybdis as well as a Scylla. He may be drawn into the bad and very irritating modern habit of using accidentals which are not really called for. Accidentals where unnecessary are doubtless used with the object of making assurance doubly sure. They have precisely the reverse effect, besides being uncomplimentary—to put it mildly—to the intelligence of the performer. Sharps, flats, and naturals which sometimes are foreign to the signature, and sometimes duplicate it, cause confusion where there was previously assurance. Bad enough at all times, they are, when one is transposing at sight, exasperating to the last degree.
An accidental is operative during the bar in which it occurs, and no further, unless it inflects the last note of a bar, and the next bar begins with the same note. It is so usual, however, to contradict an accidental in the bar next to that in which it occurs, that this practice may almost be said to have become a rule, breach of which might cause uncertainty in all but the clearest cases. This is no justification for the absurd practice of some writers, of contradicting an inflection the next time the same note un-inflected occurs, however far off this may be!
As a rule, a natural should only be used where the sharp or flat to be cancelled would not have to be repeated were the inflection intended to continue.
Legibility.
[52.]—A common cause of illegibility in manuscript music is what may be called a spider-like sameness in the web. Stems and hooks—indeed sometimes stems and note-heads!—are much of the same thickness and blackness. Compare them in printed music, and it will be seen that a dozen, perhaps a score, of stems could be spun out of one hook.