John Howell wrote:
But my comment was directed at the statement--I forget whose--that
square notation was not in use in Hildegard's time.
I did not write that square notation was not in use, but rather that the
rules and customs of interpretation as we know them today had not been
systematized. For example, in the Rules for Interpretation of chant in
the beginning of the Liber Usualis, Section IV, Paragraph 1, states
authoritatively
"Each note in Plainsong, whether isolated or ina group, whatever its
shape, has the same value, the value of a quaver in figured music."
This seems to be a modern idea which I doubt very much was the customary
interpretation in Hildgard's time. I do not deny that her music may have
been notated with some subset of symbols still in common use, but some
of the interpretations in common use today probably differ from the
interpretation of Hildegard and her contemporaries of the exact same
sequence of symbols.
ns
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