Help with renaissance notation! :'(

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marinmarais
Posts: 1
Joined: 31 Oct 2009 21:46

Help with renaissance notation! :'(

Post by marinmarais »

I hope that you can help me please:

I'm a mexican musician and baroque music researcher.

In these days arrived to my hands a rare and magnificent document, sheet music composed by a mexican genius woman.

I have never had problems passing to actual musical notation the scores I work with, but I have a problem now, this is not baroque notation...

The facsimilar that I have consists of 4 pages, Soprano I part: http://www.freeimagehosting.net/image.p ... 141159.jpg, Soprano II part http://www.freeimagehosting.net/image.p ... 93afbb.jpg, Alto http://www.freeimagehosting.net/image.p ... e1f827.jpg and Bass http://www.freeimagehosting.net/image.p ... 7ec966.jpg

Could you help me giving me an idea of how transcribe it into actual notation?
There are no barlines, I see some crotchets (quarters) without stems, beside crotchets with stems, and minims (half) with flags! And about the rests, they are very confusing!

I tried to transcribe it "2:1" but, the minims (half) with flags do not help me, I don't know what to do!

Could you help me?

Arturo Escorza.
vaarky
Moderator
Posts: 2163
Joined: 22 Aug 2008 07:28

Re: Help with renaissance notation! :'(

Post by vaarky »

Thanks for your efforts. If you haven't already, you might want to take a look at the Wikipedia entry for Mensural Notation in case it's helpful:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensural_notation

It doesn't cover clefs much, but you can post further questions here and folks will try to help out.
Robert Urmann
Posts: 19
Joined: 10 Jan 2009 01:40
Location: Leipzig, Germany

Re: Help with renaissance notation! :'(

Post by Robert Urmann »

Arturo: it's not the easiest facs you provided, but it's short and should be worth to pick out some clues in understanding white mensural notation—printed or handwritten. But first of all you should be familiar with general terms and the look of this kind of ancient notation; the design of notes and rests will then be more comfortable to read. Just use Vaarky's link(s) as a starting point!

A few hints to transcribe the first line of each part:
* Don't try to do it 2:1 when this is your first attempt. You can adjust note values later on. Take a semibreve as a whole note (that's what it looks like); a minim as a half note, a semiminim as a quarter note etc. The rest that is shown at the beginning of each of the first lines equals the duration of a semiminim (quarter rest).
* The time signature of these first lines is "c". That means imperfect measure which is similar to our modern 4/4 time signature: each note/rest shorter than a semibreve takes half the time of the longer value (in these times the perfect measure was a triple beat).
* Duration of a dotted note is prolonged by one half of its original duration (like modern notation).

Just try to bring all parts together in a single staff. I did it some hours ago: all voices end fine at the first fermata! We can compare our transcriptions if you like (without text underlay).

The following lines in the facsimiles are in perfect measure (signed "3"). There are additional rules to apply. The simplest one is, that 1 semibreve equals the duration of 3 minims. In your files we find dotted minims as well as flagged minims: dotted notes are extended by one half of their duration, flagged ones are shortened that way. What else? Ah: colored (black) notes. They are used to indicate shifts in rhythm. The common triple beat is loooong short, loooong short, but in your example the pattern of the colored semibreves followed by a colored[!] breve is short loooong, short loooong. When in perfect measure a breve is followed by a breve, the first one would last for 3 beats; that's why there are occasionally some colored breves in a line, where the first breve lasts for only two beats (and the following one respectively). There are many more rules which can't be explained here.

Well, this should be enough to let you make a rough transcription. Some patches are hard to read; you must reconstruct what's missing and fill in notes that fit in the musical context. I attached my transcription of the first two voices (first line only) as an example.

Best,
Robert
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Cdalitz
Posts: 168
Joined: 24 Apr 2007 14:42

Re: Help with renaissance notation! :'(

Post by Cdalitz »

Concerning mensural notation, I would recommend the following manual, which explains everything short and comprehensive:
http://music.case.edu/duffin/Notation/N ... Manual.pdf

Good luck,

Christoph
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