[mei-neumes-ig] Style name

Tue Jun 21 18:13:41 CEST 2016

Thanks for your message, Andrew.
I was thinking more along the lines of the broad families, actually.

It's the names that are problematic in my opinion, so I was thinking that
instead of using solely the established names (i.e. "French", "St. Gall",
"Messine", etc.), we could ALSO have a name that describes the look of the
neumes.  (My use of "scribal" wasn't intended to point to small and/or
unique characteristics of a particular hand or style.  Instead, I was
leaning towards a new way to name notational styles that is based on "look"
instead of location.)

I have attached some examples of notations from all over Europe.  They
could be described in these ways: "slanted ductus, narrow nib" (or "slanted
narrow"), "vertical ductus, narrow nib," "small square," etc. (we would
have to make up the names).
I see similarities in the first 4 examples, especially as compared to the
other 3. Yet, they are all named in the literature as distinct notational
styles.

I was thinking that since we are still in the early stages here, we could
have a place-holder for a different way to name the notational styles. It
may or may not be adopted by researchers, but I think it *could* simplify
the discussion surrounding neumes and possibly reduce the number of
different types that are currently being distinguished.

Just a thought!
Debra

----------------------------------------------------
Debra Lacoste, Ph.D.

| Cantus Database | http://cantus.uwaterloo.ca ||
| also https://uwaterloo.ca/margot/margot-projects/cantus ||
| University of Waterloo, Sessional Instructor ||

| dlacoste at uwaterloo.ca |
| debra.lacoste at gmail.com |

On Tue, Jun 21, 2016 at 11:41 AM, Andrew Hankinson <
andrew.hankinson at mail.mcgill.ca> wrote:

>
> 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 ||
> | also https://uwaterloo.ca/margot/margot-projects/cantus ||
> | University of Waterloo, Sessional Instructor ||
>
> | dlacoste at uwaterloo.ca |
> | debra.lacoste at gmail.com |
>
> On Mon, Jun 20, 2016 at 4:55 PM, Roland, Perry D. (pdr4h) <
> 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 (w)
>> pdr4h (at) virginia (dot) edu
>> ________________________________________
>> From: mei-neumes-ig [mei-neumes-ig-bounces+pdr4h=
>> eservices.virginia.edu at lists.uni-paderborn.de] on behalf of Andrew
>> Hankinson [andrew.hankinson at mail.mcgill.ca]
>> Sent: Monday, June 20, 2016 1:31 PM
>> To: 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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>
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