Musical Notation
 |
| One of the manuscripts from our visit. |
Now that my multi-prelim is over, I can dig around this subject for a bit. I'm a music nerd, so bear in mind that I am totally biased when I say that this manuscript was probably the most interesting thing I got to see in the Rare Books and Manuscripts library yesterday. I had gone last year in another FWS, and although I have to admit seeing a Nobel prize in Chemistry comes real close to topping this, I think the 1300s-1400s music notation is a bit more in line with my interests.
Yesterday's Suspicions (feat. Ari and Mr. Strickland):
- Four lined staves.
- Black vertical lines to denote measures.
- Symbol at the top left of each staff is a key signature.
- Red measure lines for coda? Double bar line?
- Not sure what the red text is between the lines of the staff.
Hoping to answer some of the questions and to confirm some of the suspicions I had during yesterday's visit.
Without going through the brambly forest that is the second page of Google, here is the source I'll be using to confirm/deny our best guesses: http://www.dolmetsch.com/medieval.pdf
 |
| A snippet of one of my arrangements for reference. |
Apparently four lined staves were the most popular (Horne, 1). Three, five, and six lined staves existed, but they weren't as common. The key signature was denoted via the clef (we were kind of correct), the repeated "stylized F-like" symbol on the top left of every line. Unlike our key signatures which are constant in their position on our staves, they could move their clef to donate a different line/space as F.
In the picture of the manuscript we saw yesterday, this means that the third line from the bottom of each staff was F. This system is pretty convenient - if you were comfortable singing lower, the clef could be moved higher rather than writing notes lower. This practice was probably done to save ink and paper.
Where's the time signature?
 |
| Screenshot of a nice table from Wikipedia. |
We were confused about what particular time signature this piece was in, and rhythm in these texts are what I feel like is closer to interpreting meter in poetry rather than a set standard. Once a rhythmic mode was established, it did not change (Horne, 2), but beginning to determine and interpret the rhythmic mode is something required of the reader.
I can't seem to find any answer to the red measure lines, but if I figure anything out, I'll come back with that information.
This was a really interesting read, and I wanted to give you props for the effort that you put into this. I wanted to throw my interpretation out there for the red measure line. It seems like it is towards the very end of the piece, as the next line likely starts a new song. I would venture that the notes to the right of the red line are a coda, with the red line itself maybe representing a repeat symbol. As a piano player, I have seen this format before, where part of the piece will repeat, and then the second time through, it will move past the repeat and end the piece with a few more notes, which is potentially what is represented by the notes to the right of the line. This is purely speculation, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt, but I think it is a likely scenario.
ReplyDeleteThis is awesome. Kudos for the effort. I wonder if there was any one specific musical piece that started including the key signature. Maybe a crazy complex Composition that was unprecedented at the time? I also agree with Jasper that the lines are fairly similar to a coda, but maybe with different rules. Overall, this was really interesting
ReplyDelete