Talk:Mensural notation

message: Thanks for posting this!  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:6080:8C00:16C:5881:A30B:30F:3260 (talk) 03:17, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

message: Wow, this is better organized, and new tables to boot!
Vaux, 6 January 2006
Yes, this is really quite excellent!  Bravo!
Phembree (talk) 04:16, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rewrite 

message: "....Black Notation, colored notes were written in red."
If so, I have to rewrite Cordier and Chantilly.
: Sorry, forgot to sign. Shlishke (talk) 21:26, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Black notation is red? I thought it just was called red note notation. ... 

message: I'm hesitant to do the edit myself because I'm just learning this and I don't have citation, but I think the section on coloration needs elaboration.
The article as is states that coloration reduces notes by 1/3 value.  This is true but later in the 15th century minor color was developed, which reduces note values by 1/4, and of course this has a big impact on the way rhythms are interpreted.  So I think further detail is needed in this section. Naeelah (talk) 16:17, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Coloration 

message: Might there be a mention somewhere in this article about the Unicode chart for musical symbols (range:1D100–1D1FF), but more specifically the mensural notation section (range:1D1B6–1D1CE)?  It seems quite applicable....  - NDCompuGeek (talk) 16:43, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unicode 

message: Does anybody have an opinion as to when open music notation gave way to black notation; when the longest note changed from the Longa to the Breve.  My own theory is that it coincided with music printing.  If I am wrong is there any other explanation?  Michael  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.5.154.244 (talk) 14:22, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The usual explanation is the replacing of parchment by paper, which is more vulnerable to Tintenfraß. Sparafucil (talk) 01:05, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  [White versus black] 

message: This is an interesting example, but is there an unstated reason that the last  phrase "...cucu ne swik thu never nu" never seems to be transcribed using alteration? Sparafucil (talk) 01:24, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Good question. I was considering transcribing it that way myself, but all the print sources I've seen do it the way I showed here. Probably just because of the parallelism with all the other bars with which it is in counterpoint. One also has to keep in mind that the sole surviving manuscript was probably first notated in undifferenciated square notes, with the longa downstrokes only added later, so the scribe might simply have forgotten one. Fut.Perf. ☼ 04:28, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, a plausible reading. Before changing the caption though, what do "primitive" and "contemporary" mean in "primitive form of mensural notation, shows the typical 6/4 meter of most contemporary music."? Sparafucil (talk) 18:46, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well, "primitive" in the sense of displaying only just the first basic patterns of mensural notation (pre-Franconian), i.e. the imperfection of longae, but archaic features in the ligatures, no rhythmic complexity beneath the brevis, and as you noticed, a lack of application of the alteration pattern. "Contemporary" in the sense of "from that time", obviously; as the text points out, the basic 6/4 meter was a regular feature of virtually all 13th-century rhythmically measured music. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:56, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I've tried a revision, but wonder if "basic" wouldn't be better then? The climacus looks like the only possible archaism; when exactly does it disappear? Sparafucil (talk) 20:18, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: The "climacus"-like thing in the first line – more appropriately probably called a "currentes" or "coniuncturae" ligature – was pretty much a 13th century thing if I remember correctly; such sequences never had a clearly defined rhythmic reading in classical mensural notation (Ars Nova and beyond). Actually the binary ligature at the end of the fourth line is irregular too – it looks like a classical brevis-longa ligature, but that could never have been read in any way to fit in the meter here after the Franconian system and later, because the longa would have been forced to be read as perfect/ternary in this context according to the "similis ante similem perfecta" rule, so we must conclude it's still just a vaguely indicated group of two notes without clearly defined rhythmic values here. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:11, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, that's really interesting enough to go in the article. Sparafucil (talk) 07:45, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alteration in [[Sumer Is Icumen In]]? 

message: I have just noticed the complete mish-mash of American and British English in this article. Sometimes it is crotchet and quaver, sometimes quarter note and eighth note; once "color" is spelt "colour", while elsewhere "colour" is spelled "color" (ignoring the technical term "coloration", which may be a separate issue for all I know); the abbreviation "i.e." is never followed by a comma (British practice) and yet the abbreviation "m." (American) is used instead of "b." (British). Now, the usual procedure in such cases is to discover what the first-established style was, but the article was originally created with this very clash of regional English in place. Even though the creator, User:Vaux, appears to be American (or, in any case, is a graduate student at an American university), he seems to have preferred British terminology for note-names (quaver, crotchet, etc.) while at the same time favouring American language elsewhere ("measure" instead of "bar"). While avoiding regionalisms is always a good policy, they cannot always be avoided in practice, and this is clearly such a case. What is the consensus of the editors to resolve this problem?—Jerome Kohl (talk) 02:07, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: We're hardly going to talk about double and quadruple whole-notes even in American, are we? This seems a clear case of US-style musicologese, surely a recognized sub-regional variant. ;-) Perhaps a way forward would be to worry about consistency in minim vs minima &c., the second maybe less confusing in this article's context. Sparafucil (talk) 05:59, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I certainly do not care to talk about double and quadruple whole notes! I had set out to fix one variant term I had noticed, but upon double-checking to be sure the article really was mainly in UK English, I found it was just about 50/50. In such cases (as I said), the usual arbiter is precedent, but in this case we haven't got one, for the reason I mentioned. "Minim" vs "minima" is of course another thing that needs addressing, but this is a question of using the modern (UK) term vs a Latin (and possibly more appropriate) one. All I want to know is, should I change all the "crotchets" to "quarter notes", or the reverse?—Jerome Kohl (talk) 00:31, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: There is indeed a sort of precedent, mixing American English with note names that make sense in this context. But play it safe and change them to Fusae if that seems less disturbing ;-) Sparafucil (talk) 06:40, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

text: Early versions (right from the start, actually, as I mention above) also had "crotchet", "minim" instead of "quarter note", "half note", and -ize is not necessarily an indication of American spelling—it predominates also in Oxford UK spelling, the only exceptions being "analyse" and two others (I've forgotten which) that the Oxford pundits held were actually French loan words. This is the first example I have come across in nearly eight years editing on Wikipedia where the precedent is so perfectly balanced. As far as I am concerned, we could just toss a coin to decide which variety of English should be used. I just didn't want to start an edit war by picking one variety if there were strong feelings in favo(u)r of the other style. Since no(-)one has raised any objections so far, let us go with American English, then. I also agree with your suggestion for dealing with the Latin vs. English terminology, which works especially well when including the British terms (which are cognate with the Latin, unlike their American counterparts—at least, they are cognate until we get down to the semiminim and fusa).—Jerome Kohl (talk) 00:53, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Regional English

message: I believe there may be a mistake in the transcription of the Baude Cordier piece. Toward the end, you have the augmentation sign that basically sets the minim as the integer valor (3 minims per bar). The proportio tripla calls for 9 minims per bar, which is correctly translated. But, the final proportion 8/9 should be affected by the proportio tripla that precedes it. The proportion says that there should be now 8 minims where there were previously 9.  Those two bars of 8 eighth notes should actually be one bar of 8 16th notes.
Is this correct?
— Preceding unsigned comment added by AppaAliApsa (talk • contribs) 
:Not necessarily. There are nine quavers in the preceding bar (which happen to be notated with triplet marks over them), and eight in the following two bars. In modern notational conventions, this is the usual relationship. Semiquavers would mean a proportion of 16:9  instead of 8:9. There are other ways of transcribing the passage, of course, though I cannot imagine they would be easier to read.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 05:21, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'm not sure in hindsight why I chose to divide those 8 quavers (minims) into two local "bars" (maybe to reflect the usual relationship of four notated minims, i.e. a breve, as the conventional equivalent of a modern bar). Note, however, that these "bars" are actually shorter than the preceding ones, so AppaAliApsa is correct insofar as we have 8 notes in the space of what would be the normal 3/4 bar of the surrounding music (check out the full score, which I hope makes it clearer.) Maybe it would have been better to just call it a single 4/4 bar rather than two 2/4. I still think it was the right decision to translate the minims into quavers rather than semiquavers though. Each of them is three quarters the length of a normal quaver in the rest of the piece, i.e. closer in length to a quaver than to a semiquaver, and each of them is slightly longer than the triplet quavers in the bar immediately preceding it. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:35, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Baude Cordier example 

message: What is the basis for favoring "perfect" and "imperfect" prolation over the historical terms "major" and "minor," which are the only ones I've encountered in the literature? I'll gladly change them if it doesn't seem justified. Thanks! Hebeckwith (talk) 06:22, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Major and minor refer to scales/key in modern music.  Perfect and imperfect in mensural notation refer to what in modern music are called time signatures.--Phil Holmes (talk) 07:38, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

text: Hebeckwith is correct that the conventional terms are "prolatio major" and "prolatio minor". But we are in fact using them correctly throughout in our article, aren't we? The only place where I'm seeing "prolatio perfecta" and "imperfecta" is in the list of Unicode character names, and Unicode actually does use them like that (though arguably ahistorically). Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:13, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Prolation: perfect/imperfect or major/minor? 

message: Is it worth noting that the old form of a crotchet rest was still in use for most of the 20th Century as a sort of reversed quaver rest?  See List of musical symbols#Rhythmic values of notes and rests and Quarter note.  Seeing the table of rests it is obvious that the mensural Semiminim rest is the origin of the manuscript crotchet rest as taught in music theory until at least 1975. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 17:13, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Crotchet rests