[mei-neumes-ig] Background

[Roland, Perry D. (pdr4h)]

Hi Kate,

MEI already has a general way of handling the description of scribal hands.  As you observe, there's no compelling reason to put the description on every element / neume.  So, MEI provides the <hand> element, which holds the description, and the @hand attribute, which members of the att.handident class can use to reference the description.  Currently there's no machine-processable way (using a dedicated attribute on <hand>, for instance) to indicate scribal angle.  But that's something that can be considered as part of the neume revision process.

--
p.


From: mei-neumes-ig [mailto:mei-neumes-ig-bounces at lists.uni-paderborn.de] On Behalf Of Kate Helsen
Sent: Monday, June 13, 2016 10:22 AM
To: Neumes Interest Group of the Music Encoding Initiative
Subject: Re: [mei-neumes-ig] Background

Scribal angle just means the generalized angle that the scribe uses to express pitches going up or down within a neume itself. For example, in a neume that represents three pitches going up and then two going down, the scribe might write the three ascending ones almost right over top of one another (a "vertical angle") and then the descending ones with more of a wide angle - pointing sort of 'south-east', if you like. Another scribe from a different geographic area might make the ascending pitches at more of a 45 degree angle with the descending ones almost straight up and down.

I'm not sure that we totally *need* to express this in every neume, since it is usually a feature of scribal habit or tradition and will be the same throughout the entire manuscript - or at least everything that is written by that scribe and others trained in a similar way. But it is something that semiologists talk about a lot because it helps distinguish, at a glance, one scribal tradition from another. (People often also talk about how the more vertical renderings were more amenable to the musical staff, once it came along.)

Cheers,
K

On Sun, Jun 12, 2016 at 9:50 PM, Ichiro Fujinaga <ich at music.mcgill.ca<mailto:ich at music.mcgill.ca>> wrote:
Greetings,

Perry Roland has graciously offered to help us with building the MEI Neume Customization Module.

Here’s what I sent to him.
If there’re any corrections or additions please post them here.

He has questions which I will post separately.

Ich

> On Jun 7, 2016, at 11:28 AM, Ichiro Fujinaga <ich at music.mcgill.ca<mailto:ich at music.mcgill.ca>> wrote:
>
> That would be great!
> Thank you for offering your expertise!
>
> I’ll try to summarize what we discussed:
>
> First, a neume consists of one or more neume component(s) (nc); musicologists call this a “pitch”.
>
> For each nc, there are two major (mandatory?) properties: “relation to previous” and “connection (type)”.
> “Relation to previous” is basically the relative height position to the previous nc.
> “Connection” is how the current nc is connected to the previous nc.
>
> There seems to be six (6) different types of “relation to previous”: High, Low, Neutral (or Unknown), Same, Same or higher, and Same or lower.
>
> The eight (8) “connection” types are: Curbed clockwise, Curbed anti-clockwise, Angular, Gap, Quilisma curve 2,  Quilisma curve 3, Looped, and V-shape.
>
> Then there are several optional attributes or modifications that can be applied to each nc:
> Episema, Liquescent, Jagged, Oriscus, Long, Flat, and Crook.
>
> Finally, there are attributes/modification that can be applied to the entire neume:
> Significative letters, After lower, After higher, Hispanic tick 1, and Hispanic tick 2.
>
> There are other symbols unrelated to nuemes, such as clefs, repeat signs, modal alphabetic letters, repetenda signs, custos, unknown or “Mysterious” symbols, and scribal angle (I don’t know what this means).
>
> I’m attaching a spreadsheet containing some of examples of neumes with some of the combinations of the above attributes.
> There are some codings in there that needs clarification, such as “op” and “W3”. I will ask on the neume mailing list.
>
> I hope I’ve given you something to get started. Let me know if you have questions, most of which I will probably have to referred to the experts.
>
> Thank you again for your help!
>
> Ich
>

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