[mei-neumes-ig] MEI Neumes Module Draft, Version 0.2

Wed Sep 20 17:55:36 CEST 2017

Dear All,

Thank you for your work on this.

I agree completely, Andrew, that the neume names should be
able to be included in the encoding, but the encoding should not depend on
them. A quick thought concerning your suggestion below… “neume name” (rather
than “neume type” would probably be more specific and clearer to musicologists
(like me!) using the module.

Just to clarify… the proposal Thomas Weber and I have put
forward does not rely upon neume names. The designations we recommend (“acuta”
/ “gravis” \ “punctus” . and “producta” _ ) are the earliest historical
designations for notational signs, and—most importantly—they are not limited to
one notational type. (Perhaps this is along the lines of what you meant with "data shapes", Andrew?)

They designate basic shapes that themselves convey basic information (acuta = one note with the same or higher pitch;
gravis = one note with lower pitch; punctus = one note with same or lower pitch and normal duration; producta = one note
with same or lower pitch and longer duration).

They are especially convenient for encoding because they can
be combined to create all the notational signs of all types medieval notation.

(Small historical detour... For the writer of the 10th century treatise
where these terms are first used for musical notation, the signs formed binary
oppositions to each other: “Acuta” and “gravis” were drawn from the study of
grammar, with the acuta placed over vowels where the voice rose in pitch and
the gravis placed with syllables where the voice fell in pitch. “Punctus” and “producta”
are symbols drawn from verse analysis: short syllables in Latin were marked
with punctus; long syllables were marked with producta.)

We suggest using these designations (as basic "data shapes"), rather than the tilt
attribute, because the basic meaning conveyed by an acuta (the logical domain)
remains consistent across all medieval notations, but the nuanced tilt of the
sign (the visual domain, whether it’s written “north” or “northeast”, for
example) varies with individual scribes.

Many thanks and all best wishes,
Elaine   

Dr. Elaine Stratton Hild
Corpus monodicum: Die einstimmige Musik des lateinischen Mittelalters    
Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg
Institut für Musikforschung
Domerschulstraße 13
D-97070 Würzburg

>>> Andrew Hankinson <andrew.hankinson at mail.mcgill.ca> 09/20/17 4:58 PM >>>
Hi Thomas,

Thanks for this, and spending time putting forward some concrete suggestions. 

I'm also of the opinion that the current proposal has a significant bias towards the visual component. I believe this
has emerged largely because the exact musical content of some repertoires is unknown, making a system built on a
"logical" domain approach to musical description difficult to define. (that is, when all you have a symbol that is
angled, and you don't even know what pitch it is, how do you describe it musically?) That said, I think it's worthwhile
to try and tug the existing proposal in the direction of addressing and describing the musical content directly.

I have been under the impression that building a system built on explicit naming of neumes as elements would not be a
good idea, based on critiques I have heard on the existing neume module. The same neume can have many names (across
styles or languages) and building a system on neume names makes it more difficult to accurately capture the longer
non-standard (i.e., "compound") neumes. Thus the reason for building a system based on shape contour, rather than shape
name.

That isn't to say that names are not a valuable thing to encode, but the idea is that these names would be included in a
separate taxonomy within the file (or even a separate controlled vocabulary) that might be referenced within an
encoding. I think this will go further towards making a general narrowing it down to a particular style. 

You might imagine something along the lines of:

or

This would let you use your own controlled vocabulary to name things for your own encoding, while maintaining a more
general 'data shape' for the musical structures, allowing them to be compared across repertoires.

-Andrew

> On 20 Sep 2017, at 15:26, Thomas Weber <thomas.weber at notengrafik.com> wrote:
> 
> Dear group,
> 
> 
> Elaine and me looked at both the Hildegard example as well as the "standard" neumes table by Cardine and made an
attempt at encoding the signs' properties with better separation of domains.  We tried to add more logical domain
information to the previously mostly graphical domain info.
> 
> Our thesis was that the main distinguishing factor between different use cases of the Neumes module is in how much
detail the notation should be described.  Many projects right now use the Volpiano font to capture only the melodic
contour and potentially connection information.  For Corpus monodicum, we want to encode more properties of single
staff-bound components, mainly whether a component is an oriscus, quilisma or strophicus.  Our understanding is that the
Old Hispanic project as well as the Optical Neumes Recognition project need even more detailed information to be
encodable.
> 
> We came to the conclusion that the problem we still need to solve is better separation of visual and logical domains. 
Our impression is that the visual domain is of primary importance for both of the named projects.  That might be the
reason why the       current draft seems to mainly focus on the visual domain.
> 
> We prepared the following table based on Cardine that outlines our suggested encoding.
> 
>   http://cm.notengrafik.com/2017-Graz-Cantus-Newtork/cardine-table/cardine_web.xml
> 
> The most obvious addition are sub-elements describing each <nc> as one of the seven basic single pitch signs (four
basic signs based on Anonymus Vaticanus: acuta, gravis, punctus, producta; three special signs: quilisma, oriscus,
strophicus).  We chose to make them elements so that each of those can get its specific set of attributes describing
them in more detail, like "extended" for acuta/gravis (understood to indicate larger intervals) or "waves" for quilisma.
 The idea behind that was to make it clearer which attributes are usable in which contexts, but this could also be done
by means of Schematron rules when using attributes instead of elements - which we did in our pre-Graz state of ideas:
> 
>   http://cm.notengrafik.com/2017-Graz-Cantus-Network/presentation/presentation.html#variations
>   http://cm.notengrafik.com/2017-Graz-Cantus-Network/presentation/presentation.html#code-sign
> 
> We suggest to represent the "angled" property using the @con attribute, as "angularity" is a property of the
connection.  Depending on the sign, the logical meaning of this would be to lengthen the component before or after the
angled connection.  This logical domain info could be recorded using @dur on the proper <nc>.
> 
> We picked up Ich's encoding of "O splendidissima" and made a modified version here:
> 
>   http://cm.notengrafik.com/2017-Graz-Cantus-Network/O_splindidissima.mei
> 
> Here we also tried to illustrate how more detailed visual domain information could added, namely the suggested @tilt. 
As the tilt is in most cases a consistent scribal idiosyncrasy, this might however better be solved using the tables of
signs that Stefan Morent reminded us of recently.  There, these idiosyncrasies could be described once for an entire
file, source or hand.  Johannes (hi to Johannes in CC) suggested that these "standard" patterns of writing might be best
put in <scoreDef> and to encode deviations where they occur.  These tables could also be useful to document variation
among tokens.
> 
> We suggest to keep the table problem and how to link between the content and the tableby project       specific naming/numbering schemes or by simple XML IDs, or maybe implicitly by characteristic sequence
of single pitch signs) for later discussion, together with other topics like how to represent mi signs and rubrics.
> 
> We wish you a fruitful workshop in Halifax, and we are looking forward to hearing about any outcome concerning the
neumes module!
> Thomas
> 
> 
> Am 07.09.2017 um 14:57 schrieb Ichiro Fujinaga, Prof.:
>> Here’s what I have for the draft of the proposal for the new MEI Neumes Module schema.
>> I’ve arbitrarily named it Version 0.2, so that we can refer back to it.
>> 
>> For ease of discussion and efficiency, please discuss one issue at a time in separate email threads, e.g., Re:
@oriscus.
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> 
>> Ichiro
>> 
>> ==============================
>> MEI Neumes Module Draft, Version 0.2
>> 
>> A <neume> element consists of one or more <nc> element(s).
>> 
>> A <nc> (neume component) is a single pitched event, although the exact pitch may not be known.
>> 
>> Attributes for <neume>:
>> @intm (interval melodic; relative to the previous <neume>) {u|d|s|n|sh|sl} (u = up/high, d = down/low, s = same, n =
neutral/unknown, sh = same or higher (but not lower), sl = same or lower (but not higher))
>> @significative letters
>> @hispanicTick (type1, type2)
>> @hook
>> 
>> Attributes for <nc>: 
>> @pname
>> @oct
>> @intm (interval melodic; relative to the previous <neume>) {u|d|s|n|sh|sl} (u = up, d = down, s = same, n =
neutral/unknown, sh = same or higher (but not lower), sl = same or lower (but not higher))
>> @wavy 
>> @significative letters
>> @curved (anticlockwise, clockwise)
>> @angular (plain, v-shaped, staircase) (was @angled) 
>> @liquescence
>> @episema
>> @extended
>> @tilt {n|ne|e|se|s|sw|w|ne} (north, northeast, etc.)
>> @quilisma (2, 3, or 4 curves)
>> @oriscus (curved, flat, jagged)
>> @con (gapped, looped) (connection to the previous <nc> within the same <neume>)
>> 
>> Removed from the previous version: @jagged, @flat, @long, @diagonalright, and @hispanicLoop from the <neume> level.
>> 
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> 
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