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

Elaine Stratton Hild elaine.stratton_hild at uni-wuerzburg.de
Thu Sep 21 14:05:37 CEST 2017 

Thanks so much for your time, Andrew (and all!).  My answers are below, marked with *. 

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 9:24 PM >>>
Thank you, Elaine! This clarifies a few things.

"Shape" is a term I borrowed from the process of data modelling to mean two objects which share the same properties and
values, but which may be completely different instances of something. Two houses with one door and 10 windows could be
said to have the same 'data shape', and it doesn't matter if one is a bungalow and one a skinny three-story Dutch house,
and one is called a 'house' and another a 'huis'. 

In this case, it simply means that two things that have a pitch contour of "up-then-down," for example, must be
instances of the same class of things regardless of any particular name or identifier attached to them. The thing is
defined by its properties, and not by a name that is given to it.


***Thank you for the explanation!

Perhaps you could clarify a few things about the functioning of your proposed elements. It seems that there are
properties of these symbols that are non-exclusive, and that a single symbol can carry with it multiple dimensions of
description. 

As an encoder, when would I choose to use a 'gravis' over a 'puncta' if they can both mean 'lower' pitch? 


***These terms refer to different signs, different visual forms on the page. A gravis looks different than a punctus.
(Gravis looks like \ while punctus looks like a period . In O splendidissima, the first notational sign above the
syllable "splen" is an acuta connected to a gravis; two punctus are visible above the syllable "di")  A musicologist
encoding the notation can record the basic visual forms with the terms gravis, acuta, punctus, producta. The meanings of
these signs will need to encoded separately, because the meanings depend, to some extent, on context of the surrounding
signs (which a musicologist can interpret). A punctus can mean "lower than preceding pitch" or it could also be slightly
more ambiguous--it could mean "same or lower than the preceding pitch." 


 I understand that only puncta can be 'same or lower' but it seems, on the face of it, that there might be some
confusion about when to use each. It also seems like there are three signs available to encode the 'same' pitch, two for
'lower', and only one for 'higher.' 


***When choosing which basic sign to encode, the musicologist will follow the scribe's use of the signs. Yes, you're
right, different signs were used to convey the same information about pitch content. Conveying information about pitch
content was not the only (or even the most important) aspect of notation for many medieval scribes. They used different
forms to show different aspects of performance, and that's why it's important for us to be able to encode both the
graphic signs (the visual domain) as well as the meanings we can glean from the scribe's use of the signs (the logical
domain).  Returning to O splendidissima, the "lower" pitches the scribe wrote with punctus were probably performed
shorter, or "lighter" than the the "lower" pitch recorded with the gravis. A musicologist should be able to add as much
of this nuanced performance information that she wants, depending on her understanding of the notation and her desire
for detail.


 Will this cover the range of pitch movements necessary in the repertoires?


***We need the options of neutral (or unknown), same, lower, same or lower, higher, same or higher. In some cases, a
scribe will modify a sign to give additional information concerning pitch content. For instance, a scribe sometimes
wrote a gravis longer, visually--extending down further than usual. (The gravis over "splen" happens to be one example.)
The information about melodic interval is still "lower than previous pitch", but the musicologist might want to record
the additional visual information (extended) and also record the meaning she attributes to the scribe's modification
("lower than the previous pitch by a third or more").  (In the case of O splendidissima, because the scribe used a
staff, we can record absolute pitch levels--the descent of "g" to "e".)

Both 'puncta' and 'producta' also seem to have an impact on duration, which I think should be clearly separated from
pitch. Is there any way to separate the duration implications out from them? If we remove duration from the meaning of
the sign (and encode it in a separate attribute), are 'punctus' and 'productus' effectively the same thing? 


****We would still differentiate between punctus and producta to reflect the sign the scribe used (for our visual
domain). Yes, I think we absolutely should record the duration implications separately, because some scribes used
"producta" as the standard sign for "lower" and "same or lower" pitches, while other scribes used "punctus" as the
standard and only used "producta" in special situations, to indicate lengthened duration. I think Thomas Weber was
considering suggesting the @dur attribute (data.DURATION.neumes) with the values "longer" and "shorter". 

Is there a sign for 'same or higher with longer duration'? Is that necessary?


**No, there's no basic sign for that. To show a higher pitch with longer duration, a scribe would add an episema to the
acuta, or add a significative letter "t" (tenere) next to the acuta. The proposal from Thomas Weber and me would allow a
significative letter element and using the @dur attribute (longer and shorter duration) to record the meaning of the
scribe's use of episema and significative letters.

Is there a reason the 'neume' element has been replaced with 'ncg' in the supplied encoding?


***Yes! We are trying to make the Neumes Module revision comfortable for all musicologists. The term neume can mean
different things, depending on the context in which it is used, and the musicologist. Neume component grouping is
clearly a technical term, specific to the encoding, that will not cause confusion for chant scholars.

Cheers!
-Andrew

> On 20 Sep 2017, at 16:55, Elaine Stratton Hild <elaine.stratton_hild at uni-wuerzburg.de> wrote:
> 
> 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 encoding system for all neumed repertoires, instead of
narrowing it down to a particular style. 
> 
> You might imagine something along the lines of:
> 
> <neume type="#clivis">
> ...
> </neume>
> 
> or
> 
> <neume type="http://example.org/neumevocabulary#clivis">
> ...
> </neume>
> 
> 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 bthe 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 tables (by semi-standardized names,
by 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 (> >> @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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> > 
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