There no ligatures in Kievan notation (was Re: Kievan "hatchet" notes for lilypond?)

[Monk Panteleimon]

On Thursday 30 November 2006 06:01, you wrote:
> Hello, Panteleimon!

Hello, thank you for your response

> I fear the task of fully implementing kievan chant notation is more than
> just a question of adding thirteen glyphs. 
> recognize at least pes ligatures (those pairwise stacked rhombic glyphs)
> and clivis ligatures (e.g. the third glyph in the last line of the long
> example).  

Actually, those are not ligatures, and there are no ligatures at all in Kievan 
notation. The two stacked diamond-shapes you refer to are simply a half note. 
They refer to the space inbetween the two diamonds, in this case "mi" or 
b-natural. If the diamonds where in spaces, they would refer to the line 
in-between. The "squiggly-with-stem" and "double-diamond-with-stem" notes 
that also seem to take up several spaces are not ligatures either, just 16th 
notes. (By the way, the durations I cite are doubled by some transcribers in 
order to have a whole-note as the longest duration, but this gives an 
incorrect impression of the flow of the chant).

> To me, the notation looks structurally quite similar to gothic 
> (also called "hufnagel") chant notation, though the glyphs are somewhat
> different.  

I would be interested to know what notation looked like in Poland in the 
1600's, to see if it has  a parent for this style

> Still, adding those glyphs that are not part of ligatures (sole note
> heads, clefs, custos, accidentals, etc.) would be a good starting point
> (any volunteers?).

As I understand it, the only things necessary *besides* adding the glyphs 
would be:

1. Spacing according text syllable. This is the only way notes are spaced in 
this chant, as you can see. There is a small &  even block of space between 
each textual syllable, all the notes whereof are equidistant and very close.
 %%%(This is part of what makes this notation better for Znamenny Chant, being 
closer in this regard to the neumatic origins and taking up less space for 
long, involved melismata. It looks ugly if you try to do it with round 
notes.)%%%
 My hope is that this can be accomplished simply making slurs invisible in the 
kievan-init.ly file |  Slur #'transparent = ##t  |  
and then convincing lilypond to put an appropriate block of space between 
syllables. At first I thought that this could be done with LyricSpace 
#'minimum-distance , but that would only work for short syllables.

2. Right now we can set shaped noteheads in LP like this:
\set shapeNoteStyles = ##(fa # la fa # la mi)
(or something like that).  We'd have to do something similar but different in 
the init.ly for kievan, since several symbols (the quarter and the eight) 
have slightly different forms for lines and spaces. These differences are 
very important to the overall look of the music. Note that they differ  not 
to according scale-position (like shapenotes) but according to whether they 
are on a line or space. That means that g,8 looks different from g8
Furthermore, the eigth note (block with long tail) has not two but *four* 
slightly different forms: two for stem-up and two for stem-down. 

I think that rest could be done just by thickening lines and such, except 
perhaps that the beams on the 16th notes (single beams) extend beyond the 
note-stems and half sort of blunt edges, but I'm sure that can be done 
without designing anything new, right?

Thanks again for your response.
I look forward to doing whatever I can to implement this feature.

Sincerely,
Monk Panteleimon
Hermitage of the Holy Cross
Wayne, WV USA
address@hidden
http://www.holycross-hermitage.com/
http://www.holycrosskliros.org/

PS. I have an adaption of a long chant like this example in which the sequence 
of notes is almost exactly as in the Slavonic original. I can post both if 
you like, so you how can see how simple it really is.


> Greetings,
> Juergen
>
> On Wed, 29 Nov 2006, Monk Panteleimon wrote:
> > Hello, developers of Lilypond.
> >
> > I submitted to the lilypond-user list a queru regarding the possibilty of
> > adding symbols for kievan chant notation to lilyponds "feta" font.
> > I got no response, but thought I'd try the developers, specifically those
> > involved with older notations.
> >
> > I have counted thirteen symbols that would need adding to lilypond's font
> > (presumably as "noteheads,"  with their stems included, two "dots" and
> > one "clef") in order to enable lilypond to imitate the Chant-books of the
> > Russian Orthodox Church. I have no idea how to make such characters, or
> > how to fit them into lilypond, so I'm asking this to be added as a
> > sponsored feature.
> >
> > Being a monk I have no personal money, but if the lilypond-developers can
> > give me an estimated cost of sponsorship for the addition of these
> > symbols, then I believe that I may be able find several people interested
> > enough to support the feature, even if they are not already
> > lilypond-users. I am thinking of some Russian Chant enthusiasts and
> > people already developing ways to digitally reproduce Russian Liturgical
> > books.
> >
> > I have attached 2 images, one extracted from a pdf-scan of a Russian
> > Chant book from 1909, another being someone's attempt to reproduce this
> > using a ttf that is typed in to a word-processor. It should be obvious
> > which is which. If you like I can point out the short-comings of the ttf
> > version.
> > I can also tell you what the symbols are and point you to some online
> > explanations of this simple notation, although I would warn you that
> > there are two practices of interpreting the durations of these notes, of
> > which practices the less accurate is the more common.
> >
> > If for some reason you are adverse to adding these symbols to lilypond's
> > vocabulary, please let me know.
> > You can download complete books in kievan notation in .pdf from this
> > page: http://www.seminaria.ru/raritet/quadsborn.htm
> >
> > Thank you for your time.
> >
> > Monk Panteleimon
> > Hermitage of the Holy Cross
> > Wayne, WV USA
> > address@hidden
> > http://www.holycross-hermitage.com/
> > http://www.holycrosskliros.org/