Re: Lily and petrucci (whaddapair!)

[William R. Brohinsky]

<dumb mode on>
Uh...whassa MGG?
<dumb mode off>
<darn, it didn't work.>

You can find some rather nicely sized scans for one piece from odhecaton
at my web site
(http://listen.to/early.music then take the link for Reading and
Transcribing White Mensural Notation, there are four pages
thumbnail-linked near the top of the page). You can find some fine
examples of scribal notation at
http://www.kb.dk/elib/mss/amour/chanson-en.htm where the first chanson
sports a nice mensural-period G clef on the verso. 
As you can see, the printed example is far from 45 degrees in the
noteheads, and the written example (which is not unlike the other
canonical example of quality in readable, hand-written mensural notation
from the Dijon bibliotech) have even more elongate noteheads. The G clef
in both examples has, as does the current Lilypond mensural G, a large
body of mass involved in centering on the G line, but at the same time
have what seem to be ornamental loops above, making the clef stand as
tall as the staff. Where the loops are lighter-weight, they are more
involved, keeping the over-all effect one of balance. Likewise, the
Petrucci C clef has a much longer left vertical, extending both above
and below the staff (which seems to me to nicely balance the glut of
heavy bar around the C line) and the Thott MSS C clef has practically no
vertical on the right, appearing to be more of a stack of a breve over a
longa with the vertical tail on the left connecting them. The F clef is
only represented in the Thott MS's from what I have available to sling
URLs for. This is representative, though: a long with a right descending
tail (on G in Thott, I believe on F in Petrucci, although I'll have to
check) with two minims, one tail up on G and one tail down on E,
signifying at their join where F will be. The lily mensural F has no
vertical from the upper minim-head (semibreve, really). This tends to
make the clef bottom-heavy for me.

I haven't any of my scans from Odhecaton here, so I can't post any of
them for viewing. I'll try to get some up with bass clefs on them
thisevening.

raybro

PS: is there a reference somewhere that tells what has been
obsoleted/deprecated, and what replaces it? That would be _very_ useful,
since so much of the code you can find to try to copy has so much,
apparently, that is out-of-fashion.

Juergen Reuter wrote:
> 
> > The current
> > lozenge-heads just seem too small and insubstantial unless you use
> > paper26, and frankly, having a 2-page 16-point  modern notation piece
> > grow to 4 pages at 26 really isn't good. Also, they are _quite_ square!
> 
> As far as I know, the mensural noteheads currently use 45 degree sides,
> resulting in a square shape (45+45=90, 45+45=90).  The mensural fa clef
> (that one consisting of square noteheads) uses 35 degree sides,
> resulting in a rhombic (35+35=70, 55+55=110) form.  Is that what you
> are looking for?
> 
> > ... Odhecaton and Canti B and C ...
> 
> I could not find these specific examples (is there an excerpt somewhere
> in the MGG?), but I had a look at various other of Petrucci's printings
> in the MGG.  Looks to me, that the C clef has a slightly longer stem
> at its left side.  The G clef looks quite different than what we
> currently have, but there seems to be no real consensus about the
> shape of the G clef at that time.  Lily's current G clef tries to
> make some compromise between the various G clefs.  Any help to
> improve the clefs and/or add new styles is appreciated! :-)
> 
> > \property Voice.Stem \override #'stem-centered = ##t
> > saying that it has no idea what stem-centered is. However, it does print
> > centered stems!
> 
> Seems this property has been obsoleted (Han-Wen/Jan?).
> 
> Greetings,
>            Juergen