At 9:54 PM -0600 11/9/07, Noel Stoutenburg wrote:
John Howell wrote:
But since Guido appropriated the very neumatic shapes that had been
in use for a couple of centuries previously, and simply regularized
them graphically, I don't really see why there would have been much
ambiguity. In fact the whole point of his innovations was to
remove ambiguity so that something composed in Arezzo and copied in
Milano could be accurately read in Munich!
Well, can we not say much the same thing about five line
common-practice notation from the late Renaissance, until, of
course, we come to the edge of the topic of "musica ficta"? My
point is that there are almost certainly differences between modern
square notation conventions, and the conventions used by Hildegard,
and the scribes and copyists who preserved her music.
As a sometime music historian, I have to say that this is not only
possible but expected. After all, there were regional differences in
both liturgies and chant melodies, so one would expect regional
differences in every other aspect of music as well. And it's also
quite true that scribes make mistakes, just as their descendents the
typesetters and computer engravers do, and those mistakes can be
passed on to the next generation.
At present I am not informed either as to the details of extent of
the differences, but I am certain they exist, and that this fact
should be kept in mind if Hildegard's surviving music is such that
it seems clear in modern square notation.
OK, what I don't quite understand is what is meant by "modern square
notation." The entire reason for reviving medieval chant notation
was to return the music to its roots, so the effort was to duplicate
medieval notation whole, based on surviving manuscripts. Nobody set
out to invent a NEW chant notation!!! And in my opinion that
notation is the perfect notation for that music, for which it was
devised, which is WHY I was trying to restore Hildegard's music,
transcribed into modern 'round' notation, back to its original form
(which started this discussion).
However, neither the brothers at Solesmes nor any of the modern
"experts" understand the meanings of every single jot and tittle in
the medieval notation, and they freely admit it. So it isn't a
matter of a "modern square notation," but rather a matter of using a
medieval notation some of which we are not entirely confident of
interpreting, and that is a very different thing. (It is also very
common in historical research.) The quilisma is an example of
something we don't entirely understand, but plicas are fairly
straightforward, and the graduated breath markings (which Franco
later adapted as rest notations) quite well understood.
I don't know for sure that there is a direct parallel in square
notation to musica ficta in common practice notation of the
Renaissance, but just as importantly, I am not sufficiently informed
to say there was not, either, and I am more inclined to think there
probably were differences, even if small, which had some
significance.
I don't entirely understand what you say, Noel. Music ficta, by
definition, was not notated, either in chant notation or in
renaissance notation. It was applied by the performers, according to
the rules they had learned in choirboy school and according to their
personal taste. In fact the only ficta that would even have applied
to chant would have been the occasional "una nota super la," since
cadential ficta for "causa pulchritudinus" would never have occurred.
The little editorial ficta we see in modern editions are suggestions
by modern editors, some of whom understand what they're doing and
some of whom do not, and I always make my own decisions about whether
or not to observe them. But they did NOT appear in the originals.
But with that said, it is of course quite true that not every rule of
musica ficta was applied in exactly the same way by every single
renaissance performer. That much is clear in the keyboard or lute
intabulations of vocal music, in which the inflections of ficta ARE
shown in the tablature, but turn out to be different in different
manuscripts. Perhaps the closest modern parallel would be not in
classical music but in folk and traditional music, where not only
does every singer have his or her own interpretation, but that
interpretation may change from one verse to the next. Tom Binkley
said that he would be surprised if ANY two performances of early
music, when it was new, were exactly the same, and I think he was
right on the money.
John
--
John R. Howell
Virginia Tech Department of Music
College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
_______________________________________________
Finale mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
