Talk:Mensural notation

Thanks for posting this! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:6080:8C00:16C:5881:A30B:30F:3260 (talk) 03:17, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Rewrite
Wow, this is better organized, and new tables to boot!

Vaux, 6 January 2006

Yes, this is really quite excellent! Bravo!

Phembree (talk) 04:16, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Charpentier example
The Charpentier example is more confusing than enlightening. It is fundamentally different from the white mensural notation because: It is certainly an interesting notation, but I don't think it should be part of this article. &mdash; Sebastian 09:48, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
 * it is not mensural and
 * if anything, it is rather a black notation because it distinguishes the semiminima from the minima by adding a flag, not by coloration.
 * Although it may not be canonical white notation, it certainly shows the vestiges of such notation long after most people think it was obsolete. What we need in order to give it some perspective is more examples of earlier white mensural notation. &mdash;Wahoofive (talk) 20:40, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough, but a more persistant instances are found in Fr. Couperin, while there are many examples of hemiola bars in Charpentier where three noirs equal two bars worth of blanches. I have access to facsimiles but no scanner or experience posting images to WP. Would a pdf be of use?Sparafucil 04:26, 16 June 2007 (UTC)


 * We can't use PDF files, but if you would like to send it to me, I could make a screenshot or two of it and post it here. &mdash; Sebastian 03:19, 17 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks - I uploaded it - see below. &mdash; Sebastian 05:57, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
 * [[Image:Elevatio.png]]

Some notes in the last line seem to have no stems. Is this correct? &mdash;Wahoofive (talk) 02:59, 19 June 2007 (UTC)


 * The noires (black notes) follow the same scheme as the blanches (white notes):
 * No stem = longest value
 * with stem = half of the above
 * with flag = half of the above
 * However, I still don't see the point of the notation. At first I thought the noires indicated quadruplets, which would have been nifty, but I now realize that one unstemmed noire has exactly the same value as a stemmed blanche. Sparafucil wrote above "three noirs equal two bars worth of blanches". Since there are three (unstemmed) noires in bar 14, and all other bars have 3 stemmed blanches, that would make the unstemmed noires exactly as long as the unstemmed blanches, so there seems to be no point in differentiating them. So, Sparafucil, what's the point of this notation?  &mdash; Sebastian 03:40, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I think the point is that unstemmed = unstemmed and that the coloration is alerting us to a hemiola bar in 3/1. Btw, sorry the time signature at the beginning isnt cleaned up yet (Charpentier uses 3); there's obviously some cludging involved in getting Sibelius to beam crochets. Sparafucil 05:45, 19 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Hmm, that seems like a very arbitrary idiosyncracy without any practical use. Lots of rennaissance music has syncopes that cross a bar line - why not just write bar 14 like this: [[Image:Elevatio_bar_14.png]]? &mdash; Sebastian 06:36, 19 June 2007 (UTC)


 * The whole point was that this was an anachronism for Charpentier; the fact that there were conventional ways to notate this only underscores its idiosyncrasy. Still, our efforts would be better spent finding more typical examples from an earlier period. &mdash;Wahoofive (talk) 16:21, 19 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for reminding me to get back on track. For me, before my curiosity distracted me, the whole point of this discussion was to find out if Charpentier's notation should be featured in this article. Can we now agree that it's just an idiosyncracy that does not make the bar for an encyclopedia? &mdash; Sebastian 20:20, 19 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I think it would be valid if the article had more content. At the moment it kind of sticks out. &mdash;Wahoofive (talk) 21:45, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I substituted a chunk for the Te Deum example in the article. Since the history section touches on the 17c, it doesnt seem so out of place. We now have an example of the mensural system in full flower and one of its decadence; maybe an emergent example would be useful as well. Sparafucil 02:36, 20 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Nice example. I note, though, that there are a couple of grayish quarter rests near the beginning and end, undoubtedly a side effect of the effort to convince Sibelius (or some notation program) to produce this weird notation. Possible to fix? &mdash;Wahoofive (talk) 05:11, 20 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't want to diminish Sparafucil's effort of creating this picture, but I really don't think it belongs here. Let me rephrase my reason using what I learned from the discussion so far:


 * Charpentier's notation is not even close to a mensural notation: In all the points that distinguish mensural from modern notation, it resembles the modern notation. (This not only apllies to superficial similarity, but to all structural, syntactical and logical properties, such as context-independent note values, lack of ligatures, use of a dot for lengthening instead of signum perfectionis, and so on.) The only difference to modern notation is that it codes note values differently, using two parallel systems of blanches and noires, where each blanche has the same value as the noire. That, however, never was the case in any mensural notation!


 * I could imagine this notation to be covered in the article on Marc-Antoine Charpentier or in some article on unusual musical notations. However, even in that case, its notability would need to be established; currently, there are no sources for this which makes it look like original research. &mdash; Sebastian 18:26, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Unlike the Te Deum (where we seem to agree), this example cannot be correctly interpreted within the modern system: the point is that the black notes are _not_ the same values. It is of course arguable that coloration is not the most important feature of the mensural system, but this does represent pretty nearly its last gasp. I dont understand your point about "notability", or what sources should be given beyond the one I supplied; do you mean my reading of the ms. is original research? Sparafucil 09:19, 22 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm getting tired and bored of the repetitive and silly argument that it's mensural just because it's not completely modern. (Your arguments are just red herrings: I agree that this example cannot be correctly interpreted within the modern system, but of course that doesn't make it a mensural notation. Likewise, the question if blanche=noire is irrelevant: This is not a criterion that distinguishes mensural from modern notation.) This is really getting too silly now.


 * Re: "what sources should be given beyond the one I supplied": There's not a single source in the whole 17th century section! Please read WP:CITE.


 * But above all, the question if this is mensural or not is not something that should be decided between you and me. Per WP:OR we need to base this on reliable sources. Since we have no source (not even an unreliable one) that backs up that section I will remove it. &mdash; Sebastian 16:39, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

I assure you I am not being willfully boring and silly; I'm just unable to follow some of your argument: if it's not modern, what is it?. Perhaps the Charpentier example will be useful to someone doing an article on coloration. Our mutual incomprehension does highlight the article's lack of a clear definition of the word mensural. I take its essence to be the dependence of a note's rythmic value on mensural/time signatures, and I extend that to the implied time signatures of coloration. Different examples can be found in Monteverde, where in the Malpiero ed. music in common time is often interupted by a 3 followed by two bars of three whole notes each. The new complete ed. gives these as one bar of quarter note triplets with no change of time signature, which is clearly a mensural interpretation of the notation, whether one agrees with it or not. Sparafucil 12:16, 23 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your polite reply; I apologize for my impatient statement above, and I value that you are deescalating it.


 * While I do enjoy discussions about music, this is unfortunately not the right place for it. I, too, got carried away and forgot that Wikipedia is not a discussion forum. There is a clear policy about that - No original research - which applies exactly to our situation: The statement that Charpentier's notation is an example of mensural notation fits the definition of that policy that forbids "unpublished facts, arguments, concepts, statements, or theories."


 * While it is irrelevant what you and I think about the example, our mutual incomprehension still bothers me, and I think I owe you a reply to your question "if it's not modern, what is it?". I think the answer is simple: It is Charpentier's idiosyncratic notation. It is derived from modern notation, just like shape notes or modern tabulature. Nobody says a notation can only be either modern or mensural. &mdash; Sebastian 22:12, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
 * No one ever claimed it was true mensural notation, just that it contained vestiges of mensural notation well after modern notation was broadly adopted. &mdash;Wahoofive (talk) 00:43, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
 * That's not what I said. I was just answering Sparafucil's question. You know what, this is not going anywhere. Please let's just stop it. It is a moot discussion anyway. As I said, it is irrelevant what we think about the example. &mdash; Sebastian 04:50, 24 June 2007 (UTC)


 * BTW, the point you're making about coloration is interesting. I'll bring it up at talk:coloration. &mdash; Sebastian 23:44, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry, in my haste to create a coloration (music) stub I moved your talk page, which belongs with the color disambiguation page. I can't find undo, but will attempt to move it back. Sparafucil 02:56, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for writing this; it seems to be fixed now. &mdash; Sebastian 04:50, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Very late to the party – after more than five years – but it still itches me to put in my two cents here: While it is true that this notation is not "really mensural" in crucial ways, it is still also true that all those of its features that deviate from standard normal practice can be explained as holdovers from mensural notation, so yes, there was some relevance to this. The non-modern features are: If you were to rewrite this in "real" mensural notation, the only differences would be that there would be no dots after the dotted whole notes in m.1 in the bass and m.9 in the upper voice, where the semibreves would be understood as "perfect" by default, and that the syncopated rhythm in m.8 of the bass would have to be notated with an alterated minim instead of the semibreve. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:13, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
 * use of hollow flagged notes instead of normal crotchets in the normal ternary bars: those are standard mensural semiminims. As our article says, semiminims could be written as either black unflagged, or hollow flagged notes. Here, Carpentier chooses the hollow flagged version in the overall "white" contexts, to distinguish them from the otherwise identically-looking unflagged notes in the "black" contexts (which are not crotchets either, but blackened minims).
 * the black unstemmed notes in the hemiola bars: those are standard blackened ("colorated") semibreves, and this is exactly the type of context where you'd see such black semibreves in mensural notation: a "color prolationis" in the context of "prolatio maior". The blackening serves to make it clear that they are binary, and as such part of a hemiolic structure.

Black notation is red? I thought it just was called red note notation. ...
"....Black Notation, colored notes were written in red."

If so, I have to rewrite Cordier and Chantilly.


 * Sorry, forgot to sign. Shlishke (talk) 21:26, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Coloration
I'm hesitant to do the edit myself because I'm just learning this and I don't have citation, but I think the section on coloration needs elaboration.

The article as is states that coloration reduces notes by 1/3 value. This is true but later in the 15th century minor color was developed, which reduces note values by 1/4, and of course this has a big impact on the way rhythms are interpreted. So I think further detail is needed in this section. Naeelah (talk) 16:17, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Unicode
Might there be a mention somewhere in this article about the Unicode chart for musical symbols (range:1D100–1D1FF), but more specifically the mensural notation section (range:1D1B6–1D1CE)? It seems quite applicable.... - NDCompuGeek (talk) 16:43, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

[White versus black]
Does anybody have an opinion as to when open music notation gave way to black notation; when the longest note changed from the Longa to the Breve. My own theory is that it coincided with music printing. If I am wrong is there any other explanation? Michael —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.5.154.244 (talk) 14:22, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
 * The usual explanation is the replacing of parchment by paper, which is more vulnerable to Tintenfraß. Sparafucil (talk) 01:05, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Question
Hey there!

may I just ask how you made these wonderful music examples with mensural notation? I am thinking of experimenting with lilypond's mensural notation features, but I don't know if these are worthwile. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.119.3.2 (talk) 11:17, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * To tell you the truth, Lilypond's mensural features are somewhere between buggy and nightmarish. (Among the worst things is that the time signatures are illogically defined – whereas to get an actual mensural note you call it by its nominal value, i.e. a semibreve as a whole note, the time signatures are hard-coded to create bar structures according not to the nominal values but to the scaled-down ones used in modern transcription, e.g. 3/2 for tempus perf. prol. min. – so without manually scaling things up and down in difficult ways, you can never fit the notes into those implied bars. Then, the large rests are all wrong, the note heads are ugly in most styles except one (far too small semibreves), and, most crucially, it's difficult to coax Lily into setting notes at anything like the tight intervals found in the originals, because the program can't be dissuaded from the modern idea that things should be spaced out proportionally to their duration. So, much is ultimately possible, but it takes a lot of manual tweaking.
 * For the white notation incipits in File:Josquin Domine ne in furore.svg, I used a technique based on that described here (plus some manual scaling of durations to trick Lily into thinking the four incipits were all of the same length). For the extended black and white examples, I used a user-submitted hack described here, but I'm not sure if it runs on all versions. It also still requires a lot of manual post-editing in SVG, because it won't get the horizontal spacing quite right either. If you just want graphics of mensural notation alone (not combined with modern scores), you might be better off doing the modern equivalent of what Ottaviano Petrucci did in 1501: just get your own "moveable type" in the shape of small .svg graphics (like the ones I extracted from my examples for inline use, see commons:Category:Mensural notation), and then manually arrange them in an svg editor, such as Inkscape. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:08, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, thank you so much indeed, that is very useful to know. I will try and see what I can do with Lilypond, but will definitely experiment along the lines you suggested. P.S. you might be interested in this project: http://www.cmme.org/ - I know some of the people working on this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.83.182.215 (talk) 15:58, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
 * You are very welcome. By the way, since you seem to be interested in the topic, would you like to help improve the article? I have an idea of taking it to "featured article" review some time, so if you find anything you could improve, I'd really appreciate it. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:38, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Sure; although I suspect you know more about history/theory of mensural notation than I do. I am more practically involved with it, singing in a small ensemble using choir-books made (copied) from original sources. I don't know how widespread it is, as far as I am aware the only professional ensemble singing from original notation is Cappella Pratensis (google for their website). Anyway: I printed a pdf of this wiki article and will let you know if I noticed anything to improve. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.119.3.2 (talk) 12:29, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Alteration in Sumer Is Icumen In?
This is an interesting example, but is there an unstated reason that the last phrase "...cucu ne swik thu never nu" never seems to be transcribed using alteration? Sparafucil (talk) 01:24, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Good question. I was considering transcribing it that way myself, but all the print sources I've seen do it the way I showed here. Probably just because of the parallelism with all the other bars with which it is in counterpoint. One also has to keep in mind that the sole surviving manuscript was probably first notated in undifferenciated square notes, with the longa downstrokes only added later, so the scribe might simply have forgotten one. Fut.Perf. ☼ 04:28, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
 * OK, a plausible reading. Before changing the caption though, what do "primitive" and "contemporary" mean in "primitive form of mensural notation, shows the typical 6/4 meter of most contemporary music."? Sparafucil (talk) 18:46, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, "primitive" in the sense of displaying only just the first basic patterns of mensural notation (pre-Franconian), i.e. the imperfection of longae, but archaic features in the ligatures, no rhythmic complexity beneath the brevis, and as you noticed, a lack of application of the alteration pattern. "Contemporary" in the sense of "from that time", obviously; as the text points out, the basic 6/4 meter was a regular feature of virtually all 13th-century rhythmically measured music. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:56, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I've tried a revision, but wonder if "basic" wouldn't be better then? The climacus looks like the only possible archaism; when exactly does it disappear? Sparafucil (talk) 20:18, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
 * The "climacus"-like thing in the first line – more appropriately probably called a "currentes" or "coniuncturae" ligature – was pretty much a 13th century thing if I remember correctly; such sequences never had a clearly defined rhythmic reading in classical mensural notation (Ars Nova and beyond). Actually the binary ligature at the end of the fourth line is irregular too – it looks like a classical brevis-longa ligature, but that could never have been read in any way to fit in the meter here after the Franconian system and later, because the longa would have been forced to be read as perfect/ternary in this context according to the "similis ante similem perfecta" rule, so we must conclude it's still just a vaguely indicated group of two notes without clearly defined rhythmic values here. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:11, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that's really interesting enough to go in the article. Sparafucil (talk) 07:45, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Rating
Hello Widefox, with this edit you placed a quality mark on an article which, according to the referenced quality scale, implies that the article in question is "still missing important content or contains a lot of irrelevant material", that it has "significant issues or require[s] substantial cleanup", and that it fails to "provide a complete picture for even a moderately detailed study". You did this on an article of >50,000 bytes length, in a topic domain with which you seem to have little or no prior experience, invoking a Wikiproject scheme with which you seem to have no prior relation, and – judging from your surrounding edits – after taking not much more than maximally ten minutes to read this and two other articles in the same topic area.

As the editor who has invested most time into developing this article, may I kindly ask you to clarify on the talk page which "important content" is missing from the article or which parts of it are "irrelevant material", in which ways it would require "significant cleanup", in which ways its services for a "moderately detailed study" of the topic would be "incomplete", and which criteria of the B quality scale it would miss? Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:56, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Fut.Perf., first off, anyone can rate per WikiProject Council/Assessment FAQ. Just bump it up. The bigger problem is that the project seems dormant. (If you want to know my workings on this article assessment, it was to get a project banner on it, and I shyed away from a B as it's the first rating and, as you've correctly guessed, although irrelevant, I don't have the domain knowledge to be confident about rating it higher. As I'm a dab project editor, I'm often coming across and adding missing templates and issues all over which means I've personally rated a fair bit. As for how long I took, can't say as I'll have had the dab and other articles being edited at once, so if you check my save timings they may all come home together, which may look quick.) Seems like a good article, no quality issues implied, OK? How come it didn't have one? Regards Widefox ; talk 12:07, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, thanks for clarifying this. The reason I raised this point is that a "C", when taken seriously, is actually quite a poor rating, and slamming it on an article unthinkingly in what appears like a "drive-by" fashion without actually naming any substantial shortcomings is not really very constructive and can come across as rather insulting to article authors. There's no reason any article needs to have a project rating, especially if the project itself is not very active, so it is much better not to have any rating at all than to have a poorly thought out and unsubstantiated one. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:22, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Do you consider it B? (GA and higher has a process, so not an option. So the scope here for disagreement is relatively minor.). Not a problem to change it (2nd time).
 * Best to focus on the content, maybe you could reread your comments to realise how you're coming across? Widefox ; talk 16:26, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I do think the article as it stands warrants a "B" (I was thinking about taking it for GA/FA some time, but I realise it would require some ironing out of gaps in inline referencing and possibly a few other tweaks for that); it is certainly close to what can reasonably be expected in terms of breadth and depth of factual coverage, and I happen to be rather proud of all the illustrations. As for my tone, well, I'm sorry and I appreciate your constructive approach now, but as a matter of fact I actually meant to come across as curt, intending to make you understand that hasty taggings with things like "C" can actually piss editors off. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:08, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
 * All for B not C! Seriously? Question fix an off-by-one rating sure, questioning validity of others to edit/AGF/OWN may not be a constructive tone, however emotionally invested you are. I refute the idea that projects aren't helpful - they delegate and can only help drive more to see and help (your good work). Anyhow, this is quite offtopic, so in hindsight should have stayed on my talk. Widefox ; talk 17:55, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Regional English
I have just noticed the complete mish-mash of American and British English in this article. Sometimes it is crotchet and quaver, sometimes quarter note and eighth note; once "color" is spelt "colour", while elsewhere "colour" is spelled "color" (ignoring the technical term "coloration", which may be a separate issue for all I know); the abbreviation "i.e." is never followed by a comma (British practice) and yet the abbreviation "m." (American) is used instead of "b." (British). Now, the usual procedure in such cases is to discover what the first-established style was, but the article was originally created with this very clash of regional English in place. Even though the creator, User:Vaux, appears to be American (or, in any case, is a graduate student at an American university), he seems to have preferred British terminology for note-names (quaver, crotchet, etc.) while at the same time favouring American language elsewhere ("measure" instead of "bar"). While avoiding regionalisms is always a good policy, they cannot always be avoided in practice, and this is clearly such a case. What is the consensus of the editors to resolve this problem?—Jerome Kohl (talk) 02:07, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
 * We're hardly going to talk about double and quadruple whole-notes even in American, are we? This seems a clear case of US-style musicologese, surely a recognized sub-regional variant. ;-) Perhaps a way forward would be to worry about consistency in minim vs minima &c., the second maybe less confusing in this article's context. Sparafucil (talk) 05:59, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I certainly do not care to talk about double and quadruple whole notes! I had set out to fix one variant term I had noticed, but upon double-checking to be sure the article really was mainly in UK English, I found it was just about 50/50. In such cases (as I said), the usual arbiter is precedent, but in this case we haven't got one, for the reason I mentioned. "Minim" vs "minima" is of course another thing that needs addressing, but this is a question of using the modern (UK) term vs a Latin (and possibly more appropriate) one. All I want to know is, should I change all the "crotchets" to "quarter notes", or the reverse?—Jerome Kohl (talk) 00:31, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
 * There is indeed a sort of precedent, mixing American English with note names that make sense in this context. But play it safe and change them to Fusae if that seems less disturbing ;-) Sparafucil (talk) 06:40, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Early versions of the article seem to have had "color" and "-ize" spellings, so I suppose it should generally be US English. We should of course still use the Latin-based historical note names in the main body of the text, wherever the actual historical note types and not their modern equivalents are referred to. I think what I was trying to do in my recent versions of the article was to first introduce those names quoting them in their fully Latin original form (semibrevis, minima, semiminima, marked as foreign terms by italics), but then silently shift over to their Anglicized versions ("semibreve", "minim", "semiminim", without italics) in the body of the text, because these seemed to be slightly more common in the literature and we can save ourselves all the typographical upheaval of too frequent italics in this way. Wherever glosses or contrasting mentions of modern note values are necessary, my suggestion would be to mention both the American and the British terms, wherever the latter are different from the historical terms with which they are being contrasted. Thus: Would that be okay? Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:09, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
 * the semibrevis (modern semibreve or whole note)
 * the semiminim (modern crotchet or quarter note)
 * the semibreve (whole note)
 * Early versions (right from the start, actually, as I mention above) also had "crotchet", "minim" instead of "quarter note", "half note", and -ize is not necessarily an indication of American spelling—it predominates also in Oxford UK spelling, the only exceptions being "analyse" and two others (I've forgotten which) that the Oxford pundits held were actually French loan words. This is the first example I have come across in nearly eight years editing on Wikipedia where the precedent is so perfectly balanced. As far as I am concerned, we could just toss a coin to decide which variety of English should be used. I just didn't want to start an edit war by picking one variety if there were strong feelings in favo(u)r of the other style. Since no(-)one has raised any objections so far, let us go with American English, then. I also agree with your suggestion for dealing with the Latin vs. English terminology, which works especially well when including the British terms (which are cognate with the Latin, unlike their American counterparts—at least, they are cognate until we get down to the semiminim and fusa).—Jerome Kohl (talk) 00:53, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

The Baude Cordier example
I believe there may be a mistake in the transcription of the Baude Cordier piece. Toward the end, you have the augmentation sign that basically sets the minim as the integer valor (3 minims per bar). The proportio tripla calls for 9 minims per bar, which is correctly translated. But, the final proportion 8/9 should be affected by the proportio tripla that precedes it. The proportion says that there should be now 8 minims where there were previously 9. Those two bars of 8 eighth notes should actually be one bar of 8 16th notes.

Is this correct?

— Preceding unsigned comment added by AppaAliApsa (talk • contribs)


 * Not necessarily. There are nine quavers in the preceding bar (which happen to be notated with triplet marks over them), and eight in the following two bars. In modern notational conventions, this is the usual relationship. Semiquavers would mean a proportion of 16:9 instead of 8:9. There are other ways of transcribing the passage, of course, though I cannot imagine they would be easier to read.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 05:21, 11 December 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure in hindsight why I chose to divide those 8 quavers (minims) into two local "bars" (maybe to reflect the usual relationship of four notated minims, i.e. a breve, as the conventional equivalent of a modern bar). Note, however, that these "bars" are actually shorter than the preceding ones, so AppaAliApsa is correct insofar as we have 8 notes in the space of what would be the normal 3/4 bar of the surrounding music (check out the full score, which I hope makes it clearer.) Maybe it would have been better to just call it a single 4/4 bar rather than two 2/4. I still think it was the right decision to translate the minims into quavers rather than semiquavers though. Each of them is three quarters the length of a normal quaver in the rest of the piece, i.e. closer in length to a quaver than to a semiquaver, and each of them is slightly longer than the triplet quavers in the bar immediately preceding it. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:35, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Prolation: perfect/imperfect or major/minor?
What is the basis for favoring "perfect" and "imperfect" prolation over the historical terms "major" and "minor," which are the only ones I've encountered in the literature? I'll gladly change them if it doesn't seem justified. Thanks! Hebeckwith (talk) 06:22, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Major and minor refer to scales/key in modern music. Perfect and imperfect in mensural notation refer to what in modern music are called time signatures.--Phil Holmes (talk) 07:38, 22 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Hebeckwith is correct that the conventional terms are "prolatio major" and "prolatio minor". But we are in fact using them correctly throughout in our article, aren't we? The only place where I'm seeing "prolatio perfecta" and "imperfecta" is in the list of Unicode character names, and Unicode actually does use them like that (though arguably ahistorically). Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:13, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Crotchet rests
Is it worth noting that the old form of a crotchet rest was still in use for most of the 20th Century as a sort of reversed quaver rest? See List of musical symbols and Quarter note. Seeing the table of rests it is obvious that the mensural Semiminim rest is the origin of the manuscript crotchet rest as taught in music theory until at least 1975. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 17:13, 3 November 2023 (UTC)