Can anyone explain the attached screen shot (found in “Le Tour Italien” from Moyreau’s second book)? The piece is in 3/8 time. In the first two measures, one hand is in 16th notes and the other in 64th notes, not 32nd notes as it should be; yet in the third measure two 32nd notes are correctly equivalent one 16th. There are several other measures in this piece that use 64th notes instead of 32nd, so it’s not a one-off error. I know that Baroque composers weren’t always 100% precise about meter (think of French overtures where one holds the dots longer than notated). But this seems straightforward, or it should be.
To me that looks like either a copyist error, faithfully reproduced by the engraver, or an engraver error neglected in the proofing by the composer. I can;t imagine this is some hitherto unknown French barque musicological notation convention nobody else used (as far as I know).
People were rushed for time, engravers make mistakes, all understandable.
I do a lot of engraving and I often get confused with 64s and 32s with messy pencil manuscripts of new complexity music where sometimes this sort of thing may actually be intended for all sorts of weird reasons! But engraving software bar checkers save the day usually.
I agree with Andrew. Most musicians reading this would immediately see the obvious 2:1 correspondence of the notes in the two hands, which would arrive simultaneously at the end of the bars without any effort.
I agree that it’s no problem to play and probably a mistake. But there are seven measures (not all in sequence) that are treated this way. That’s a lot of mistakes and made me wonder if something else was going on.