At 8:18 AM +0100 3/27/08, dc wrote:
John Howell écrit:
Not in the Malipiero edition, if my memory is
anywhere close to accurate. But 3/2 is fairly
common in later Baroque music where it's an
actual time signature and not a proportion.
You often mention this shift from proportions to
time signatures. When did it take place
according to you?
Well, it has nothing to do with "according to
me," but if pressed I would have to say during
the course of the 17th century. Giovani Gabrieli
and Claudio Monteverdi were still using
proportion signs at the beginning of the century.
Archangelo Corelli was using time signatures at
the end (although they can't always be
interpreted exactly as we would expect to
interpret them). But I wouldn't be terribly
surprised to find examples of Bach or his
contemporaries using the old fashioned
proportions on rare occasions.
But to understand this gradual changeover (which
is paralleled by changes in the use of barlines,
the use of key signatures and accidentals, and a
number of other notational changes that took
place during the 17th century), it helps to know
what the older system was and why it was needed.
And actually it wasn't needed until our notation
system had evolved from triple subdivisions only
(mid-13th century, under the influence of the
Parisian rhythmic modes) to both triple and duple
subdivisions (as advocated in "Ars nova" by
Philippe de Vitry in around 1320). The
mensuration signs (an unbroken circle indicating
perfect tempus, a broken circle--still in use as
our sign for "common time"--indicating imperfect
tempus--duple subdivision--and the slash of
diminution that cut the time values of either one
in half--still in use as our sign for "cut time")
were absolute through the 16th and early 17th
century, relating only to the tactus (as far as
we can tell). The proportion signs, on the other
hand, always showed the relation between the new
tempo and the previous tempo. Another
mensuration sign would cancel the proportion and
again relate to the tactus.
(I'm deliberately ignoring Prolation, which
determined the duple or triple subdivision of the
next faster kind of notes. But in practice, of
course, it can't be ignored.)
The problem (not a problem for them, but a
problem for us in learning to interpret late 13th
century Franconian notation) is that Franco used
the same note shape to indicate both a perfect
longa (worth 3 breves) and an imperfect longa
(worth only 2 breves), while a single breve could
have its normal value of 1 breve or could be
altered to represent the value of 2
breves--EXACTLY the same value of an imperfect
longa! Everything depended on context, but we
can actually learn to read--even sightread--good
clear Franconian notation based on Franco's own
rules of interpretation. After all, THEY did!
Sorry; more information than you asked for. But
it's helpful to understand how we got to where we
are today, and to do that we have to understand
how things developed. My Early Music Literature
class is now in the middle of transcribing a 15th
century chanson from the original notation, which
is a pretty daunting task for a modern musician,
but they're doing great and learning an awful lot
by doing it. First the notes and rests; then the
musica ficta; and finally dealing with text
underlay.
John
--
John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music
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
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