Here is the archive of my first guest book!

Here is an example of typical renaissance notation. You can download any or all of these four pages for reference, if you wish, by clicking on each page.

Warning: these jpg's are each between 150K and 190K in size, and may not be viewable on systems without sufficient available memory, because they are saved as 256-level grey scales, but in 24-bit color format!

Part I

Part II

These pages comprise the parts of `Jamais Jamais Jamais' from Harmonice Musices Odhecaton A.(Odhecaton), the first collection of music printed using movable type, produced by Ottaviano Dei Petrucci in 1501, and reprinted numerous times thereafter. The parts are laid out on four pages, the first and third containing the Cantus and Tenor parts, the second and fourth containing Altus and Bassus parts. The music notational style was fairly stable by this time, and remained so for a period of 40-50 years, and yet contained much of the complexity that makes looking at Renaissance notation such a fascinating pastime. 

Additionally, the music of that era is gorgeous to hear and perform, full of surprises, and more and more available to the dilettante musician in facsimile than ever before.

The first thing that strikes the eye of the modern musician is that the music is not arranged in score form, but rather as four parts.There are no bar lines to indicate congruence between the four parts; rather, each musician is responsible for keeping track of where he is. (It has been hypothesized that part music like this had to be practiced `front-to-back' each time, since the lack of bar lines would make `picking it up in the middle' difficult, and indeed, for the modern HIP musician, it is difficult. But practice shows that it is not impracticable.)

A closer look at White Mensural notation is in order, before discussing how to transcribe it to modern notation, or, indeed, how to read directly from facsimile or original specemins.

• Staff and Clefs 
• Note shapes 
• Rests 
• Other signs and wonders 

Once you have a feel for the typographic peculiarities of the White Mensural Notation, the next thing to consider is how to read the music when there aren't a great deal of complications involved. 

Unfortunately, this isn't all that easy. However, if we take a simple passage, and presume that each note is related to the note-shapes that are longer and shorter than itself by a 2:1 ratio, it turns out that reading White Mensural Notation is exactly like reading modern notation. You just count the tempo by beating the semibreve. 

Of course, recognizing when the music will admit you to consider it in such simple terms is the crux of the matter. The first thing that must be considered is mensuration, or basic time-signature indicated relations between notes. Because the manner of notation allowed different divisions of the notes (sometimes a note divides into two of the next-shorter value notes, sometimes three) the musician looking to read mensural notation has to recognize the signs of mensuration and know how to apply them.

The good part is that Odhecaton contains a majority of pieces in alla breve, easily the simplest of the mensurations, which permits an easy reading in 2/2, with the breve equal to the measure. All divisions are binary, and pieces like Jamais jamais jamais, shown above, use clefs that translate directly into our modern bass, tenor, alto and treble clefs! A discussion and transcription of Jamais jamais jamais is included here, along with a midi file that is a direct (mechanical) performance of the transcription.

There is one thing that a student of renaissance notation should be mindful of before attempting this, which is Musica Ficta, and many things which demand further consideration, such as Coloration and Proportions, and with the trinary mensurations, Imperfection and Alteration. Plus, one could make a good argument for a few lifetimes of study of Ligatures . Towards that end, I've now included another page devoted to examples from manuscripts (as opposed to printed sources) which shows many ligatures and gives discussion of how to deal with them. Also, because solmization is used in most theoretical books, I've a page on Guido d'Arezzo, who invented solmization, the basis of 700 years of music notation, and a mnemonic teaching aid, all in the 13th century.

There is a partial Glossary page. Most of the definitions are moderately specific to the context in which they are linked into the text in the other pages, but it could be edifying to browse.

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