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In a piece of music with a 3/8 time signature, suppose the first measure starts with two sixteenth notes:

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Should the last measure then be shortened to just a single quarter note to balance the anacrusis? I always thought so, but in this sheet the last measure is full.

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Source.

Here is another edition, that is even less consistent.

Of course, the composer has the freedom to put on the paper whatever he or she wants, but a meticulous editor should rather keep the pause in the last measure or remove it?

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    The accepted answer on the linked duplicate amounts to "that's old-fashioned and we don't have to do that today." I'd like to offer a dissenting opinion: You linked to Musescore.net. Those are uploaded by non-professionals and quality varies. This edition (the first?) has a partial end measure. (And more material than shown in the first Musescore file, even for the matching variation.) Whoever typeset it just didn't care.
    – Andy Bonner
    Commented Jun 17 at 1:48
  • @Aaron I wonder whether the proposed duplicate really is one, since what the OP has here is just careless transcription, while the duplicate is clearly intentional with its fermata.
    – Andy Bonner
    Commented Jun 17 at 1:51
  • @AndyBonner I think the same answers apply either way.
    – Aaron
    Commented Jun 17 at 1:57
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    Oh boy, you're about to discover a huge resource! That link was from the International Music Score Library Project, or IMSLP. You can find just about any work that's in the public domain. Often it can be helpful for scholarship, to connect you to manuscripts and first editions. And for many overlooked works it can be the only resource. But beware...
    – Andy Bonner
    Commented Jun 17 at 14:15
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    ... beware, not all the editors of yore always got it right either. Be aware that sometimes, for popular pieces that are still being published today, you miss out on the last century or so of scholarship or trends in performative choices like fingerings. E.g. for Goldberg Variations or Grieg concerti I'd just skip straight to a reputable modern Urtext publisher. But there are many etudes and similar for which what you might pay money for today is an exact print duplicate of the public-domain version.
    – Andy Bonner
    Commented Jun 17 at 14:16

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