<div id="geary-body" dir="auto"><div>Although I believe my previous response made it to Janek directly, I think it didn't reach the list as it came from my other e-mail address. It is reproduced below.</div><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><div>Janek,</div></div><div><div><br></div></div><div><div>Great, yet another person interested in this tricky transitional notation! It gets a little lonely sometimes.</div></div><div><div><br></div></div><div><div class="geary-quote-container"><div class="geary-quote"><blockquote type="cite"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">a thread initiated by </span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Joshua Stutter about two years ago</span></blockquote></div></div></div><div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">(for it was he)</span></div><div><div><br></div></div><div><div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">My initial interest in this was during my Master's level study where I was attempting to encode some modal notation into MEI. The issue at that time on this list was whether modal notation should be encoded as "neumes" or "mensural". I was initially on the side of neumes as it seems most readily available for the same elements, but it seems that the neumes module cannot support polyphony. IIRC, modal notation would fit best into mensural.</span></div></div><div><div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></span></div></div><div><div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">My view at the time was that it is neither neumes nor mensural, and is something "special" and inherently transitional. My answer then was to try my hand at writing an ODD (in PXSL because I don't like the verbosity of XML - don't judge me!) which can be found here: <a href="https://gitlab.com/yockyrr/digital-musicology-mei">https://gitlab.com/yockyrr/digital-musicology-mei</a> this ODD likely doesn't work but I had no idea what I was doing...</span></div></div><div><div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></span></div></div><div><div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">There was discussion about adding "plica" to ligatures which I believe has made good progress: <a href="https://github.com/music-encoding/music-encoding/pull/722">https://github.com/music-encoding/music-encoding/pull/722</a> there was lots of discussion around October of last year in the MEI Slack server #ig-mensural</span></div></div><div><div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></span></div></div><div><div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">For my continuing work I have largely moved away from MEI until someone (perhaps yourself!) can add support. My own project at the time was attempting to encode modal notation as succinctly as possible (due to time constraints) which eventually became <a href="https://gitlab.com/yockyrr/w1-ndp">https://gitlab.com/yockyrr/w1-ndp</a> with a parser <a href="https://gitlab.com/yockyrr/ndp">https://gitlab.com/yockyrr/ndp</a> and discussion can be found in my Master's thesis: <a href="http://theses.gla.ac.uk/79015/5/2020StutterMMus.pdf">http://theses.gla.ac.uk/79015/5/2020StutterMMus.pdf</a></span></div></div><div><div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></span></div></div><div><div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">How I would approach this nowadays if I had more time would be to pragmatically attempt to fit and stuff modal rhythm into the mensural module as best as possible, but bearing in mind what I know now that any "rules" that the mid-twentieth century writers came up with are broken time and time again in actual sources.</span></div></div><div><div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></span></div></div><div><div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Good luck, and feel free to reach out to me for more info as someone who would love to use more MEI in my projects for want of support!</span></div></div><div><div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></span></div></div><div><div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Joshua.</span></div></div></blockquote></div><div id="geary-quote" dir="auto"><br>On Fri, 16 Apr, 2021 at 20:34, Eleanor Selfridge-Field <esfield@stanford.edu> wrote:<br><blockquote type="cite">
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If you look broadly at other music-encoding systems, you will find periodic coverage in our yearbook Computing in Musicology (1985-2008), which are indexed in RILM and now included in the extended RILM subscription. Brief title information can be found at
<a href="http://www.ccarh.org/publications/books/cm/" id="LPlnk">http://www.ccarh.org/publications/books/cm/</a>. Later issues are available from the MIT Press. Various issues in early notational styles are presented in Vols. 6, 8, 10, and 12.
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Digital Resources for Musicology (drm.ccarh.org) contains information on open-access projects. Its companion ADAM (Archive of Digital Applications in Music) features projects that originated in the mainframe era. See especially the work of Nortbert Böker-Heil:
<a href="https://adam.ccarh.org/" id="LPlnk">https://adam.ccarh.org/</a>.</div>
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<div style="margin:0"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman,serif"><span style="font-size:12pt"><font size="2" face="Cambria,serif" color="#1F497D"><span style="font-size:11pt">Eleanor Selfridge-Field</span></font></span></font></div>
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<div id="divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font style="font-size:11pt" face="Calibri, sans-serif" color="#000000"><b>From:</b> mei-l <mei-l-bounces@lists.uni-paderborn.de> on behalf of Janek Spaderna <janek.spaderna@pluto.uni-freiburg.de><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Friday, March 19, 2021 12:21 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> mei-l@lists.uni-paderborn.de <mei-l@lists.uni-paderborn.de><br>
<b>Subject:</b> [MEI-L] First efforts to bring modal notation to MEI</font>
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<div class="PlainText">Hello everyone,<br>
<br>
as a project for university I am looking into the challenges of bringing<br>
support for modal notation to MEI. I am quite new to both modal notation and<br>
MEI so please don˙t hesitate to let me know in case I mix things up, miss<br>
something or end up writing straight up wrong stuff.<br>
<br>
Instead of directly thinking in terms of a (potential) concrete encoding I<br>
would like to discuss the elements and concepts of modal notation first.<br>
Below you can find the thoughts I had so for in this regard.<br>
<br>
In my opinion thinking this through beforehand can help because we can get a<br>
feeling on which level an encoding should work (rather purely visual or should<br>
it include/require analysis of some (which?) sort).<br>
<br>
The only prior discussion about this I could find is a thread initiated by<br>
Joshua Stutter about two years ago [1]. (Did I miss something?) It touches on<br>
some of the concepts which exist in modal notation but have disappeared in<br>
mensural music but is mostly concerned with finding a concrete encoding for<br>
some piece of music.<br>
<br>
<br>
# Visual elements of modal notation<br>
<br>
The distinctive visual elements are only very few: lines, clefs, notes, tractus<br>
and lyrics.<br>
<br>
Regarding notes there are some special cases:<br>
<br>
a) notes can be grouped into ligatures<br>
b) a note can have a plica attached<br>
c) notes can be followed by currentes, making it a coniunctura<br>
d) the last note in a ligature can also be coniunctura<br>
<br>
Cases a) and b) also occur in mensural notation; about c)/d) I am not sure, at<br>
least I think I do not have seen a way to encode it in MEI?<br>
<br>
Also for c) there is a difference in musical meaning wether there is a note<br>
followed by up to three lozenges or if there are more than three. The former<br>
corresponds to a ternaria whereas only the latter is truly a coniunctura.<br>
<br>
Tractus serve multiple purposes:<br>
<br>
1. It groups notes into ordines.<br>
2. It indicates syllable changes.<br>
3. It indicates alignment of different voices in organum passages.<br>
<br>
<br>
# Concepts of modal notation<br>
<br>
## Tempora, perfectiones, ordines<br>
<br>
The rhythmic feeling is based on perfectiones which consist of three tempora.<br>
If not changed by context a brevis has a length of one tempus, a longa of two.<br>
Only having seen a few transcription I still got the feeling that it is quite<br>
common to number the perfectiones.<br>
<br>
Notes are grouped by tractus into ordines. The duration of an ordo is not fix<br>
and can encompass one or more perfectiones. The tractus which ends an ordo is<br>
usually transcribed as a rest with a context dependet duration.<br>
<br>
<br>
## Discantus/organum purum<br>
<br>
On one side there is the discantus, on the other the organum purum. In between<br>
the two lives the copula.<br>
<br>
In discantus passages each voice follows a mode which can be recognized by a<br>
specific pattern of ligatures. The mode then tells which notes in the ligatures<br>
are longae and which are breves. Additional notes---be it from overlong<br>
ligatures not fitting the patterns or coniuncturae---live outside the<br>
longa/breve classification.<br>
<br>
This concept does not apply to organum purum. As I understand it the most<br>
important bit here is finding a way to encode the visual alignment of the<br>
voices. Karen Desmond writes in one of her responses to the aforementioned<br>
thread on the mailing list [2]<br>
<br>
> Ideally you would probably want to number the perfections and then you would<br>
> simply tag your tenor notes as occurring within a certain perfection.<br>
<br>
Whilst she notes other problems with this idea I am wondering if this would<br>
even be feasible in organum purum passages as I thought we do not know which<br>
notes are longae and which are breves. As I read it, Joshua shares my<br>
sentiment [3]<br>
<br>
> I'm against tagging in a particular perfection as that is implying that the<br>
> music proceeds in a constant modal rhythm and has length, which may not be<br>
> exactly correct.<br>
<br>
The copula is used to connect discantus passages with organum purum passages.<br>
During these connecting sections the duplum operates as in discantus sections<br>
whereas the tenor holds notes as in organum purum passages.<br>
<br>
Overall it can be said that a way to encode alignment is important in organum<br>
purum and copula passages. In discantus passages however this is not necessary<br>
as the modal rhythm used in all voices carries enough information; moreover the<br>
visual alignment usually does not even correspond to the musical alignment.<br>
<br>
-------------------------------<br>
<br>
<br>
What are your thoughts so far? I am looking forward to your feedback!<br>
<br>
Best<br>
Janek<br>
<br>
<br>
[1]: <a href="https://lists.uni-paderborn.de/pipermail/mei-l/2019/002268.html">https://lists.uni-paderborn.de/pipermail/mei-l/2019/002268.html</a> Joshua Stutter˙s initial message<br>
[2]: <a href="https://lists.uni-paderborn.de/pipermail/mei-l/2019/002272.html">https://lists.uni-paderborn.de/pipermail/mei-l/2019/002272.html</a> Karen Desmond in response to Joshua<br>
[3]: <a href="https://lists.uni-paderborn.de/pipermail/mei-l/2019/002280.html">https://lists.uni-paderborn.de/pipermail/mei-l/2019/002280.html</a> Joshua in response to Karen<br>
<br>
<br>
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