On 8 Nov 2007 at 22:18, John Howell wrote: > The fact is that Hildegard's music WAS > notated, probably by the monks who ran the convent and in ranges > suitable for men's voices, and as notated fits the extended range of > female voices absolutely perfectly. The lady knew what she was doing!
I think you're assigning a modern meaning to clefs, i.e., that they indicate a single absolute pitch for the notated music. I don't believe they actually worked that way -- they, in fact, worked somewhat like key signatures do today in some contexts. Yes, they did indicate the range of the melody, but not via a reference to an absolute pitch standard. Thus, I don't think notation that indicates a ranged from a *modern* perspective that would be too low for women could not have been sung by women. It might be unlikely to have been sung by women (I don't even know how many women were beign taught notation at that time -- probably very few), but not at all impossible with the flexible practices that grew up around the pitch notation of the time. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
