At 7:31 AM -0700 6/29/05, Ken Durling wrote:
At 07:16 AM 6/29/2005, you wrote:
There are mensural pieces, perhaps as early as the 13th century but
certainly by the 14th, for which the original notation and the
relations between tempus and prolatio have to be resolved when
transcribing into modern notation. By the 14th century it was
quite possible to indicate either interpretation. And there are
dance breaks in Act I of Monteverdi's "L'Orfeo" which go like the
wind when the exact interpretation of both mensuration signs and
proportion signs is observed.
John
My medieval theory is a little rusty, but wasn't it deVitry or
someone in the Ars Nova that is generally - perhaps too loosely -
credited with legitimizing, not to say inventing, the duple
subdivision?
I think that what he provided (or someone in his circle did) an
actual notational means to indicate duple subdividion called
"coloration," literally done by switching to red ink for the duple
passages, and after white notation caught on in the 15th century by
using black notation for the duples. But reading between the lines,
why would he have developed coloration if he and other musicians were
not already using duple subdivision (which was theoretically possible
even the the 13th century Frankonian notation by indicating perfect
or imperfect tempus and prolation, even though the music of the time
was predominently in triple subdivision).
John
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John & Susie Howell
Virginia Tech Department of Music
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http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
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