How Do I Count Note Durations In These Bars?

Question

I am learning a piece at the moment which is in 4/4, however some bars look like they should be 12/8, and I am confused about the mixing of notation of sometimes triplets sometimes not. Here is the section in question:

Consider bar 48. The right hand is an easily interpretable 4/4. But the bass staff is confusing. Ignoring the whole note in the extra voice, the first things we see are a quarter note rest, then a quarter note, and then two eight notes beamed together. Okay, that's 3 quarters used up of our 4 in 4/4. But there's still some eight note triples (another quarter), followed by three more eight notes.

So counting the left hand in 4/4 makes no sense. But, if we ignore the triplet of the third beat, then counting the left hand in 12/8 does make sense (albeit with bad beaming). But then the right and left hands don't match up in time properly. What am I missing here? To play this I've counted both staves as 12/8 (while playing the right hand notes as if they are dotted), but I am not certain how accurate I am being (and the original piece is very fast, so I can't figure it out by ear).

Then take bar 50. Right hand looks like a 12/8 (not paying attention to meter at the moment), left hand looks like a 4/4. Is the rule "because triplets are notated in one staff, if there's vertical alignment with quarter notes of the other staff, then it implies triplets in the other staff"? Or am I missing something else?

Answer 1

The first (and second) bar are odd. It would add up if the first two items in the LH - the rest and the chord, were 8ths rather than quarters. A misprint, or just rule-breaking? Did the composer want a 5/4 bar? Or maybe he wants a half-bar triplet, as in bar 50. I suspect the latter. But we shouldn't have to guess. BAD composer!

Apart from that bar, it seems to be just sloppy inclusion of triplet numbers. Sometimes he's put them in, sometimes we have to infer them. But it's pretty clear where they need to go to make everything add up. (Maybe the first 'big' triplet would be clearer as a 6:4 rather than a 3:2? But you get the idea.)

What's the piece? A transcription by a talented but slightly ignorant musician perhaps?

Answer 2

This is 4/4 time with triple 8th and triple quarter notes, but the triple sign is lacking in the first 2 bars shown on the beat 4 (with the triple 8th rest) and it should be notated also in the r.h. in the next measure (analogous to the l.h.)

Bad lay out, unclear notation. But there’s no doubt about the intention to me. The placement of the note heads is correct and tells everything.

Answer 3

You don't count note durations in these bars. The way they're written makes them uncountable.

Whether it's written in 4/4 or 12/8 doesn't make a lot of difference - were it written properly. Of course it will sound like 12/8 in parts - that's what the triplets do. But that's not the problem. It sounds a little (to me) at the point in question that there's a lot of rubato being exploited - which could be (if so) written into the dots so much more clearly. It's my guess that that's what's going on, but the writer just stuck extra beats in instead. Or that's what the computer writing mechanism felt was the best way to portray it.

Answer 4

Maybe (just maybe) the intended interpretation is for LH's middle voice to play an eigth triplet while LH's upper voice plays four normal eigths (one of them being a rest). Meaning that E4 should be played slightly sooner and shorter than the corresponding E3 below.

This would explain why the eigth rest is placed above the staff, in line with LH's upper voice, instead of right in the middle like the quarter rest.

(If that was indeed the intention, I agree that it is bad notation.)