[mei-neumes-ig] Style name

Tue Jun 21 17:41:38 CEST 2016

These are separate issues, I think. What Perry said in his previous e-mail is that, if we can come up with a list of style identifiers for neumes that we can categorize them into broad families. This is to help with, for example, a potential renderer, so that we can display neumes in st. gallen style, or in square style.

Scribal features are best kept to a different set of tags in MEI -- the 'hand' element:

http://music-encoding.org/documentation/3.0.0/hand/

Capturing particular graphical features ("this scribe always puts a little jiggly thing at the end of their virga") would be much harder to describe systematically (that is, in an XML encoding hierarchy), and would arguably be better left to a graphical display standard, like SVG.

But it depends on why you want to encode these things. Do you want to display the rendering exactly like the original page image? If so, why not just show the original image? Do you want to find the place where a particular scribe appears? Use the hand/handShift/handList elements. 

If you want to find a particular graphical correspondence between different MSS images, the notation encoding process is probably not the right place for this. That would probably be better left to a (theoretical) image comparison system directly, since it will be much more precise without also needing the work of somehow systematically capturing all the nuances of a particular scribe.

> On Jun 21, 2016, at 10:33 AM, Debra Lacoste <dlacoste at uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
> 
> Hello everyone,
> It's been interesting to follow these discussions.
> I don't want to muddy the waters here, but I wonder if we can assign two <styleName> elements? (if this element is the one that will describe the neumes at the level of the notational type, like "St Gall" or "French")
> 
> We might want to (at some point) identify notational forms according to their graphical/scribal features (instead of or in addition to the more traditional geographical distinctions), or perhaps you're already planning this and I just haven't kept up. (If so, my apologies!)
> 
> For example, "St Gall" neumes in the early books look a lot like "Messine" or "Laon" neumes (the latter lack the significative letters, but the ductus, size of the pen-nib, "swirliness" and other features are quite similar). Those same neumes show up in so-called "Klosterneuburg" notation in the 12th century, but by the 14th century the "Klosterneuburg" neumes are more "Gothic" in style, related perhaps to other "German" neumes.
> 
> In my experience, palaeographic research in the 20th century generally separated neume styles according to their geographic origin (accompanied by geographic names, like "French", "Klosterneuburg", "Laon," etc.), but the computer will be able to spot identical shapes in books from a wide range of places in Europe.  It could be that there is sometimes more of a connection between scribal styles of a particular *time* than of particular places. There is no doubt that some notations are specific to a particular place (Benevento, for example), but the notational style could still be assigned to a category of what the neumes look like (which would revolutionize the nomenclature of palaeography! ... No, I'm not sure I want to tackle that, but when all the individual neume-shapes are itemized and classified, I'm sure there will be duplicates in other notations and someone will take it on one day).
> 
> If the <styleName> element isn't the right place for a new name to denote a category of shapes that look similar, is there another tag where this could be entered?
> 
> To be clear, this "scribal" identification I am suggesting is at the level of the notational style overall ... comparable to how we say "square neumes," "Gothic neumes", "German neumes", "Italian neumes", etc. but not tied to a geographical location. (For instance, "square neumes" is already perfect!  It describes what it looks like, and the Franciscan mss from Italy show the same types of neumes and graphical features as mss from France with that notational style.)  I can see such a description being applied at the level of the individual neume within any set of neumes from any place, and then connections across previously distinct notational styles will become more obvious.
> 
> (and with enough samples the computer could determine whether or not the shape is similar enough and IT can uncover the connections between "Messine", "Klosterneuburg, "south-German" and "St Gall" neumes!)
> 
> Sorry to be so long in describing this.  It seems like the right time to consider the larger question of notational styles and how we perceive them, esp. since we are looking forward to branching out and working with manuscripts from France (Paris lat 12044 and 15181 -- with very different notations!) and perhaps some from Austria.
> 
> Debra
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------
> Debra Lacoste, Ph.D.
> 
> | Cantus Database | http://cantus.uwaterloo.ca <http://cantus.uwaterloo.ca/> ||
> | also https://uwaterloo.ca/margot/margot-projects/cantus <https://uwaterloo.ca/margot/margot-projects/cantus> ||
> | University of Waterloo, Sessional Instructor ||
> 
> | dlacoste at uwaterloo.ca <mailto:dlacoste at uwaterloo.ca> |
> | debra.lacoste at gmail.com <mailto:debra.lacoste at gmail.com> |
> 
> On Mon, Jun 20, 2016 at 4:55 PM, Roland, Perry D. (pdr4h) <pdr4h at eservices.virginia.edu <mailto:pdr4h at eservices.virginia.edu>> wrote:
> 
> Hi Andrew,
> 
> The <styleName> element has been present since the earliest versions of MEI, although v. 2010-05 is when it got a camel-cased name.  It can occur anywhere transcribed text is allowed.  It's intended to be used to mark a stylistic term in para-text and metadata.  <styleName> is not a metadata "field" / container itself and therefore doesn't occur directly within the header, say in <encodingDesc>, because allowing it there would place it in competition with <classification>.
> 
> However, 3.0.0 does provide a pair of new attributes on <staffDef> that can be used to describe the notation on each staff.  The @notationtype may take the values "cmn", "mensural", "mensural.black", "mensural.white", "neume", and "tab", while @notationsubtype may take any textual value.  If a 3-tiered classification is necessary for neume notation (like that provided for via the "mensural.black" and "mensural.white" values plus subtype) we can extend the value set for @notationtype.
> 
> --
> p.
> 
> __________________________
> Perry Roland
> Music Library
> University of Virginia
> P. O. Box 400175
> Charlottesville, VA 22904
> 434-982-2702 <tel:434-982-2702> (w)
> pdr4h (at) virginia (dot) edu
> ________________________________________
> From: mei-neumes-ig [mei-neumes-ig-bounces+pdr4h=eservices.virginia.edu at lists.uni-paderborn.de <mailto:eservices.virginia.edu at lists.uni-paderborn.de>] on behalf of Andrew Hankinson [andrew.hankinson at mail.mcgill.ca <mailto:andrew.hankinson at mail.mcgill.ca>]
> Sent: Monday, June 20, 2016 1:31 PM
> To: mei-neumes-ig at lists.uni-paderborn.de <mailto:mei-neumes-ig at lists.uni-paderborn.de>
> Subject: [mei-neumes-ig] Style name
> 
> Hi all (but esp. Perry):
> 
> I was just perusing the new 3.0.0 guidelines, and noticed a new element: "<styleName>".
> 
> The documentation for it says "A label for a characteristic style of writing or performance, such as 'bebop' or 'rock-n-roll'." Is one possible use of this as an identifier of notation-specific writing styles like "st. gall" or "square neumes"?
> 
> I just wanted to check because I seem to remember Perry and I having long arguments over how to best capture this, and am surprised to see it there now. :)
> 
> -Andrew
> 
> 
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