On Tue 12 May 2026 at 09:48:04 (-0400), Kieren MacMillan wrote: > As choral singer and choir conductor, every single example I’ve ever come > across “in the wild” is a stemless quarter-note head, parenthesized >95% of > the time. And — not surprisingly (to me, at least) — Gould’s example (Behind > Bars, “Enharmonic spelling”, p. 437) gives exactly this notation.
I posted some examples of enharmonic spellings, guide notes, hints, call them what you will, in the earlier thread in January. Some of them had different note heads, and even stems. (I don't think I've ever seen dotted ones.) All were in parentheses. I don't recall ever seeing a /custos/ in published music other than plainchant, and then only on four-line staves. Most of what I've used have the custodes drawn as what LP calls either vaticana or medicaea. I only see the other two in facsimiles off the web. Whenever I've had to sing plainchant, particularly the complicated ones like antiphons, I've always transcribed it into modern notation, and avoided any need for custodes by keeping the phrases unbroken, using ragged-right. > > how about a single left square bracket before the custos? This could quite > > clearly signify that the note actually belongs to the following line, and I > > could even imagine that working with the custos having the full rhythmic > > value of the following note. The bracket could be made to either span the > > whole staff or only the note head. > > If, and only if, the note is at the end of the system — which is, in my > experience, the minority of the time! — a square bracket *might* help, but > only as a **replacement for** (and not **addition to**) parentheses. However, > that would potentially introduce two different notations (one mid-system, one > at the end), which would almost certainly be confusing; as well, square > brackets have become somewhat of the de facto “editorial marking” indicator > (cf. Barenreiter critical editions), so using them for these “hint notes” > would surely introduce more ambiguity/confusion. I don't know why a custos would ever occur mid-line—that suggests you're talking about enharmonic spellings (ES), and yet the Subject line above is Modern Custodes. If the note is small and, like the normal custodes, crushed against the end of the staff, that should make a custos easily distinguishable from the usual ESs we see published. The custos won't be attached to a syllable, so it will be obvious that it's not sung, and ESs are never printed in such an extreme position in the staff. Bearing in mind the style of music that it's used for, I would keep a uniform appearance (stemless crochet) rather than confusing the eye with open noteheads, stems, dots etc. It's only there to mark which staff-line or -space, after all. > I’m definitely on Team Parenthesized-Cue-Note. :) Adding only a left parenthesis might be a nice option. A right parenthesis merely prevents the note head being crushed hard against the end of the staff. Cheers, David.
