| Welcome to Old Hispanic Office. We hope you enjoy your visit. You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. You are very welcome to read the forum, to learn about our research on the Old Hispanic office, and about the ways in which composers are developing some of our research findings into modern compositions. We invite composers who are interested in the Composition CompetitionRe-imagining Old Hispanic musical culture to register and join in the discussion. Others with an interest in Old Hispanic chant and liturgy are equally welcome to join the conversation. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Join our community! If you're already a member please log in to your account in order to post messages: |
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
| How to read the neumes (and challenge the composers...) | |
|---|---|
| Tweet Topic Started: Feb 2 2015, 01:20 PM (1,378 Views) | |
| Elsa De Luca | Feb 2 2015, 01:20 PM Post #1 |
|
Basic principles on Old Hispanic notation: The notation is adiastematic: it represents just the outline of a melody, without specifying the intervals or pitches. In this notation the exact proportionality of the vertical distance between neumes on the page does not represent the melodic distance between two sounds. Old Hispanic notation belonging to the ‘gestural’ type means that the meaning is usually carried at the end of a pen-stroke, and a change of direction of the pen-stroke indicates another pitch. The inclination of the pen-stroke tells us if the melody goes up or down. We never know for sure what the pitch of the first note of a neume is therefore we call it neutral. In the picture attached you can see a very common way of giving a three-note neume whose melodic contour is Neutral – Low – High. This kind of neume is known in scholarship as ‘porrectus’. The basic neume shapes (such as the NLH porrectus) are given with great variety of forms in the earlier Old Hispanic manuscripts. For example, a porrectus can be found with longer or shorter pen-strokes, or with a slightly different degree of inclination of the pen-stroke, but the general shape is overall maintained in all the varied forms of the basic neume shape. In other words, this notation represents many musical nuances whose meaning is inaccessible to us and is probably lost for ever. Even if we don’t know what the notational nuances meant, we know they had meaning since they are used throughout all the earlier sources in a purposeful manner. Hope this will help you finding the key to understand this beautiful chant repertory! And now… A little palaeographical challenge only for those brave enough… ( or ?)Can you spot any porrectus in the pictures of the Leon Antiphonary? The first composer who will find a porrectus will receive a special palaeographical praise from me (and my admiration) Ready? Come on guys, others are already perusing…. All best, Elsa De Luca |
![]() |
|
| Replies: | |
|---|---|
| Emma Hornby | Aug 10 2015, 06:49 PM Post #16 |
|
Administrator
|
I don't know how to get at the pdf. Can you see what the folio numbers are? (should be written at the top of the page) Two whole pages is going to be a LOT of text to translate... any chance you can narrow it down to a sensible amount of text for a composition?! |
![]() |
|
| « Previous Topic · Discussion threads · Next Topic » |
- Pages:
- 1
- 2



or
?)
porrectus.jpg (21.3 KB)



8:25 PM Jul 11