At tonight’s choir rehearsal (concert a week this Wednesday, BTW) I realised why some of the bits of the Hiawatha’s Wedding score are so hard to read. It’s not just that it is an facsimile of an old manuscript with some very outdated engraving marks (eg. crotchet rests look like backwards quaver rests) but the horizontal note spacing often sits in contrast to the note values. When following a complex passage at speed it makes a big difference when the spacing gives a nod to the timing and it can really trip up rhythm recognition when a semiquaver, a quaver and a dotted crotchet all have the same allotment of white space between them.

You get more used to styles of music engraving over time and with practise but I’m glad that modern music generally does this better. Everything the person creating a part can do to make it easier to follow is a blessing. The only upside I can see is that the score we have is quite condensed. If the spacing were more consistent, I expect it would take more pages and a lot more weight to hold up for those relying on paper copies of the score.