Hello Everyone, I skimmed through the collection of Dominican editions available at Musica Sacra's site over the weekend [1] and here are my findings. This basically is a copy of what I've already posted to the issue tracker, either for those not following the repo, or if just for the record.
Regarding the meaning of the neumes, Harrison in his How to Sing Plain Chant [2], p. 31, discusses the usual liquescent neumes, after which he adds (with an illustration of what looks exactly like the apparent virga aucta in Salve Regina): > If the liquescent [part of a neume] be absent and the note be finished > with a small line only, then only one note is to be sung, but the > double vowel sound (e.g. autem, ejus), or the several consonants > (sanctus, virgo) must be as distinctly enunciated as if the note were > there. Hence, this one note will necessarily be slightly prolonged. Similar statement (or so I assume from a rough translation) can be found in Regulae Cantus of Cormier's 1913 Processonarium [3], p. 340, with Salve Regina itself as an example: > Si tamen epiphonus et cephalicus punctulo caruerint, ut in his figuris, > labiis quidem pronuntiatur syllaba liquescens, sed in melodia, uti nota > una simplex figura talis habetur. Vide Antiphonam Salve Regina ad verba > osténde et Virgo. So it looks like they're all simply puncta aucta or, for that matter, virgae auctae. This virga aucta is actually pretty common in those editions, and the simplest rendition of a punctum auctum with no special stems whatsoever is not uncommon either. Pretty much every edition makes the 'small line' a single, constant length throughout. Rare exceptions are the neumes in Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae from both Fernandez, 1965 (p. 17, l. 2) [4], and Paredes, 1925 (p. 38, l. 1) [5]. It's only Cormier's Processonarium that differentiates these lengths on a regular basis. It also appears that Cormier's is the only edition that adjusts the small line's length when it touches the staff line, the way it's usually done with the stem of virga. There are few cases, in both Cormier's Processonarium (p. 46, l. 4) and Gillet's 1933 Antiphonarium (p. 750, l. 2) [6] of a normal epiphonus having an elongated entry stem. (Olivier already pointed out on the issue tracker, that the epiphonus with the small entry line, the one that Fr. Innocent is also concerned about, is actually a regular epiphonus that can be found within the usual neumes in Solesmes editions, namely, 1908 and 1961 Graduale Romanum, Liber Usualis, etc.) But the really tricky one is the neume over osténde in most renderings of Salve Regina. Its shape is counterintuitive for a punctum auctum ascendens, whether stemmed or not. Cormier is the only one that makes it into a 'proper' ascending form (p. 90, l. 4), exactly as pictured in his Regulae Cantus cited above. For some reason, though, all other editions have it in this awkward form, one exception being Gillet's Antiphonarium with an 'upside down' punctum (p. 134, l. 1). There are at least several other examples of this awkward neume with stems of different length, all along cases of the supposedly proper form, so its peculiarity is pretty evident. These are the things to take into account when dealing with Dominican editions, at least the ones from the collection mentioned. I should also point out few of these editions' non-standard placement of the minor virgulae, but that's another discussion entirely. Regards, Grzegorz Rolek [1] http://musicasacra.com/miscellany/dominican-liturgy/ [2] http://media.musicasacra.com/dominican/howtosing.pdf [3] http://media.musicasacra.com/dominican/processionarium-1913-Cormier.pdf [4] http://media.musicasacra.com/dominican/OHS1965.PDF [5] http://media.musicasacra.com/dominican/officium-hedomadae-sanctae-1927-paredes.pdf [6] http://media.musicasacra.com/dominican/antiphonarium-1933-gillet.pdf _______________________________________________ Gregorio-users mailing list [email protected] https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/gregorio-users
