Hi,

Hopefully someone can give me a bit of advice. I've started learning Liszt's arrangement of Ave Maria. The problem I'm having is that I don't see how the music conforms to the time signature (and because of that I've simply taken to working it out by ear).

At first I was thinking the accompaniment part must be tuplets (since otherwise all those sixteenth notes don't fit in common time), which would make it all 'add up'

But now looking at the vocal melody, in the third measure the rhythms add up nicely....but the following measure there are two whole notes and six sixteenth notes (which means I am either 'missing' two sixteenth notes or something?).

It's a beautiful piece of music so I really don't want to have to shelve it, or have to work it out by ear and learn the idiosyncracies off a specific performer instantly.

I'm aware it's advanced but if I knew how to interpret the notation then I would know how the melody notes synchronise with the accompaniment.

If anyone has any advice I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks

I don't understand what you mean. Can you illustrate your point by uploading a picture of the offending measure? Or alternatively say exactly which edition you are using, where it is available online, and where exactly in it the offending measure is?

Hi rainer,

Yes sorry I should have done that already

http://javanese.imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/4/41/IMSLP14363-S558v12.pdf

It is the fourth measure of the piece that I was specifically referring to (in terms of the vocal melody) [this is 3/13 of the pdf file]

OK, this is the first measure on the page marked in print as page 5, with a pencilled 301 in the top right corner, yes?
The accompaniment on the top and bottom staves is sextuplets. The voice part on the middle stave is to be interpreted as follows.

What you are calling "whole" notes are of course quarter notes, and there should be four of them to the measure. And there are!

The first one is the Bb.
The second is missing, this is a mistake in the score. There should either be a quarter note rest here, or else the first beat Bb should be a half note instead.
The third in the C.
The fourth consists of four sixteenth notes, Bb, A, G, A.

The other "sixteenth" notes D C which you see are not proper 16ths notes. Notice how they appear in smaller print. They are grace notes, to be fit in before the following Bb somehow, during and towards the end of the previous C. Typically such grace notes should be given about half the printed time value, or less, and so you should expect to sing them more or less like 32nd notes. In fact, if you sing them much like the corresponding place in the following measure, where the rhythm has been written out explicitly, as a dotted 8th D followed by a pair of 32nds C Bb, you won't go far wrong.

And before you ask about the bottom measure on that page, it adds up too, but the typesetting fails to make explicit that the notation has changed from straight 16ths to sextuplets.
Here the first beat is a quarter note D,
the second is an 8th C# plus a 16th rest plus a 16th A,
the third is a double dotted 8th C (which therefore has value 7/32) plus a 32nd Bb, makes 8/32 or 1/4,
and the final beat looks like 6 16ths but they are obviously sextuplets to fit with the accompaniment.

Yes that's the correct page.

Yes sorry I meant quarter notes

I wondered if that was the case about a missing half note, or the Bb being a half note, so I tried to find other copies of the score, which all presented it in the same way. What you have said makes sense though, because the music matches your description and not what I see on the page.

Thanks for the help rainer, it's very much appreciated (and tells me how the melody should interact with the accompaniment)

I wonder why they are so many copies that don't show which are sixteenth and which sextuplets though :S