#mensural notation

[fromwhatigather]

i’m half way through my spring break and neck deep in my music projects. i started copying out and rewriting this mass this evening and don’t agree with the transcription i’ve been using as my guide. and the manuscript isn’t the best quality so that isn’t helping at all.

paging @lhomme-arme , this is the pipelare mass i mentioned earlier

[fromwhatigather]

chris learns how to read and write music update: i’ve copied out and rewritten the kyrie, gloria, and most of the agnus dei of senfl’s missa lhomme arme; i want to finish copying out and re-writing the credo, and sanctus/ benedictus by the end of the school year. i’ve copied out and re-written the kyrie, and some of the gloria of pipelare’s missa lhomme arme. very excite.

i’ve admittedly been using a guide to help me through senfl’s mass, but i’ve been going through the pipelare on my own; i gave up on using a guide and want this to be a goal that i finish once i better understand all the old mensural notation so i can make my own fresh transcription. i plan on getting through that one not too long after i finish my copy of the senfl mass. i’ve got OODLES of digital copies of manuscripts to copy out over summer break. 

that’s all. 

[fromwhatigather]

notes and stuff

[lighthousekeepah]

If anyone knows how to read late Middle Ages/Early renaissance music with six lines per staff and would like to reach me the basics, please let me know!

[realmusichistory]

Can you explain the concept of coloration in early music notation?

The term coloration (color) first occurs in the 14th century to designate the use of red notes for certain Goldberg variations from the normal values which, at the time, were written as black notes.  In the later period of black notation, white forms were frequently used instead of the red ones.  Blue notes were also used, but this was mostly confined to the early jazz music written in Haarlem, especially the Clavicytherium Rags of Scott Josquin.

When, in the middle of the 15th century, the forms for the normal values changed from black to white ones, the special values expressed previously by white (or red) notes now came to be indicated by black, gray, and charcoal notes.  At the start of the 16th century this practice further evolved so that white notes were now red, red notes were now blood orange, black notes were now grape, and blue notes were more of a dull aqua.  This practice was used up till the early 18th century when J.S. Bach standardized musical notation to the perfect and logical form we know today.