musescore / musescore/MuseScore

Tenuto interpretation

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feature request
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C++
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Description

Your idea

My idea is this: I propose to implement the following interpretations of tenuto:

  1. A soft accent (the sound is not taken with an accent, but with a more weighty, leant, soft and deep touch. "Expressively maintaining" is how Moser interprets the meaning of tenuto). In piano playing, tenuto can indeed indicate dynamic note highlighting, but not at the expense of a short accent, but with the help of a deeper, more weighty immersion in the keyboard.
  2. Sound overexposure. (This meaning of the term tenuto is noted in some dictionaries, in particular by Garras (1898).

The user should be able to choose all these interpretations at his discretion and apply them accordingly.

Problem to be solved

At the moment, MuseScore Studio does not interpret the tenuto in any way (whether it exists or not, the sound is the same). There is no soft accent, no slight overexposure of sound. But we must understand that tenuto was introduced into musical terminology for a reason, not for show. And the tenuto notes still have to stand out somehow, sound different.

Of course, there can be a lot of discussion about this, and everyone can have their own idea of tenuto. Yes, first of all, tenuto involves fully maintaining the duration of the note. And based on this interpretation, it would seem that there is no point in interpreting this term in any other way. But let's take note that MuseScore currently interprets all the notes to fit the same style. I definitely can't say that it's tenuto (or sostenuto), but legato is probably for sure. And I will say, just in case, that with legato, the performer's attention is directed to the connection of neighboring sounds with each other, their flow into each other, and with tenuto it concentrates on each sound individually, on the sound as such. Feinberg writes about this very accurately. He characterizes, however, not tenuto, but sostenuto, but his explanation perfectly fits tenuto.

There is also a less successful interpretation of tenuto, and it lies in the fact that tenuto is a term by its nature purely cautionary, precautionary in nature: it is a warning not to play staccato (Grant). In my opinion, this is exactly the same formulation that MuseScore uses to this day. But what about the existence of tenuto-staccato? Agree, there are many questions here. Tenuto in MuseScore is actually quite an interesting thing. By itself, it does not affect the sound in any way, and in some cases it can even spoil in combination with another articulation (see #21700).

To summarize the above, it would still be necessary to set some special sound for the tenuto, i.e. so that the notes from the tenuto stand out. I suggest (at least to begin with) interpreting this as a soft accent, which will give a clear distinction between tenuto notes and non-tenuto notes.

Prior art

No response

Additional context

No response

Checklist
  • This request follows the guidelines for reporting issues
  • I have verified that this feature request has not been logged before, by searching the issue tracker for similar requests

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Research direction

The issue names no files, tests, or entry points to inspect. It proposes multiple possible interpretations of tenuto and leaves the desired behavior open to discussion, so the scope and completion criteria would need to be decided before implementation.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp
Domain
desktop
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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