Comment by lmm

> If you think the piece only really starts when the first note of the melody is played, then you've got problems. Either:

> 1. You hear the first articulation of the melody as the downbeat. But that would mean the first measure is in a disparate (and probably irregular) meter. Radical!

> 2. You hear the incomplete first measure as an anacrusis, or a kind of unaccented lead-in, to the second measure: OMG even more radical!

Why? Why can't you just say the piece starts partway through a bar, and we notate that with a rest for convenience? Just as when a piece ends partway through a bar we would generally accept that it ends when the last note ends (and while we might notate that as being a full bar in the case of a long held note, we don't always play it that way), not after some trailing rests, and we wouldn't consider this as being some kind of radical accented thing.