Re: Mensural notation: 2 questions

[Phil Holmes]

I've been doing something similar with madrigals from around 1590.  You will 
likely find tags useful, to identify where you need to use different 
notation for modern and ancient music.  If you can't see how this works, 
please let me know: I don't have time right now to give examples.

I also have a function kindly created by David Kastrup that allows a rest to 
be placed on a non-standard staff line in mensural music, but the normal 
staff line in modern.  Let me know if you're interested.

--
Phil Holmes


----- Original Message ----- 
From: Frauke Jurgensen
To: Phil Holmes
Cc: LilyPond User Group
Sent: Saturday, May 16, 2015 3:38 PM
Subject: Re: Mensural notation: 2 questions


Yes, some decades ago (i.e. when Apel was writing), it was common to 
transcribe mensural music at a value reduction of 4:1 (i.e. 3/4 for Circle); 
now, 3/2 is a more common transcription level, and most specialist 
performers prefer to read either from original note values (if transcribed), 
or from original notation, if the manuscript isn't filled with errors like 
the examples I'm currently dealing with. I'm working on a bigger project 
that may involve generating multiple versions in different types of notation 
from the same source file; from that point of view, it would be more 
convenient if the mensural sign was more closely attached to the meaning. In 
the meantime, at least I can get the symbol, so thanks for that!


Thanks for the point about the clefs! Now I know why it works.



On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 1:00 PM, Phil Holmes <address@hidden> wrote:

My understanding is that the Mensural time signatures are simply mapped to a 
convenient, similar modern signature.  Thus what we now refer to a "common 
time" (4/4) maps to a broken circle, which it resembles.  Since there are no 
bar lines in mensural music, the actual time signature is pretty much 
irrelevant when setting music.  FWIW, Apel says that ancient "circle" time 
(tempus perfectum) maps to modern 3/4 time.

Under 1.1.3, "Clef", the Notation Reference tells us that "Clef names 
containing non-alphabetic characters must be enclosed in quotes".

--
Phil Holmes


----- Original Message ----- From: Frauke Jurgensen
To: LilyPond User Group
Sent: Saturday, May 16, 2015 12:45 PM
Subject: Mensural notation: 2 questions



Hello all,


I suspect I'm just being a bit thick...typesetting some mensural notation, 
and having an issue with the mensural signs/time sigs. It looks like the 
definitions of these in terms of modern time signatures are in half values; 
e.g., "Circle" maps on to 3/2, when it should map on to 3/1.


My second issue is that lilypond initially couldn't seem to find any of the 
various mensural clefs that have a number on the end. I managed to make it 
work by enclosing the clef name in double quotes, but am not sure why that 
worked.


Cheers,

Frauke





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