Frank Nordberg wrote:
> 
> The longa was used well into the 16th Century at least. The
> brevis is occasionally found even today.
> 
It is quite funny that the longest note in modern notation is
called "brevis" :-)

> > which is currently not supported by abc at all.
> 
> (I have to admit that my mensural notation skills is at about the same
> level as my Spanish skills: I can read it if I really have to, but I'd
> rather not. But again, mensural notation is not the point here.)
> 
For the curious, I have just stumbled across an overview of mensural
notation:
http://www-midischool.cwru.edu/duffin/Notation/NotationManual.pdf

> > In most modern edition it is printed as a double note with a
> > fermata. Is that not sufficient?
> 
> It isn't.
> 
I conclude that abc (or at least abctab2ps) should support longae.

> >
> > What would the music symbol be for a "quadruple note" in
> > music and in tablature?
> 
> http://www.musicaviva.com/encyclopedia/display.tpl?phrase=Note%20values
> 
Thanks, that's very useful!

I feel however, that a sqare note might be hard to read. I remember 
singing a Buxtehude mass were all "breves" were printed as sqare notes,
which was barely readable and increased the practice time unnecessarily.

Thus, would the following representation be acceptable?

  |O|      /|
    |      /|
            |

 music   tablature

Maybe I should wait with the implementation until some abc user
encounters
a real world piece that has a longa in its middle. (Laura, please raise
your hand :-)

In tablature this is not a real issue, because all historic source use
shorter (sic!) note values than modern notation. Eg. a whole note 
(semibrevis) was typically printed as an eighth note in 16c tablature 
prints or manuscripts.

Christoph Dalitz
To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html

Reply via email to