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The notation of the Leon Antiphonary
Topic Started: Mar 13 2015, 07:34 PM (796 Views)
Elsa De Luca
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Dear Composers,

This post launches a new series of exciting palaeographical discussions on the notation of the tenth-century 'Leon Antiphonary' (León, Archivo Capitular, MS 8), the most complete manuscript containing Old Hispanic Chant.

On fol. 52 verso there is the alleluiaticum Ante lucem ('alleluiaticum' is the name of the chant genre). Let's have a closer look at the the first words Ante lucem preparatus est adventus (picture attached). The beginning of the chant is pretty much syllabic. To each syllable correspond no more than two notes, except for the syllables Ante lucem preparatus, which bear respectively five and four notes.

On the first word Ante there are two single-note neumes called puncta. These two puncta have different inclination of the pen-stroke, the second one pointing upward, which visually suggests a rising movement of the melody.

On the syllable lucem there are two neumes. The first one is a looped neume which represents a melodic movement NH (=Neutral High). As you already know, the first note of any neume on León 8 has to be interpreted as “Neutral” because we don’t know the pitch or its relationship with the previous neume. However, according to the principles of gestural notation, we can identify the following notes of a compound neume, as being lower, higher or unison.

The first looped neume NH is followed by a NLH neume written on top of it. This NLH neume ends with a very long final pen-stroke. If you compare the latter neume with that found on alleluia (only few words later), you will see the same NLH shape but with a much shorter final pen-stroke (see the red arrows in the pic attached).

Finally, on lucem there is a neume which strongly resembles the one we have just analysed; I am sure you know what it is... It is a two-note neume whose melodic contour is NL! Easy, don't you think?

Have a look at the rest of the chant and please feel free to ask any further question!

Elsa De Luca
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Elsa De Luca
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Dear Composers,

Has any melody ever got stuck in your head? If the answer is yes, very good!!! You have an advantage on those who replied not :P because melismas in the Old Hispanic Chant are constructed on musical repetition!

Short melismas were usually made of just one repeated neume segment (see example 1) while longer melismas were made of multiple repeated neume segments (see example 2).

Example 1 shows the beginning of the sono Deus praecinxit me from folio 103r (of course the colourful boxes are not on the original manuscripts... I added them up to help you navigate around the neumes ;) ).

Example 2 refers to the long melisma which runs along the border of folio 104v (BTW the analysis of the notation of this melisma reveals that it was probably written by the same scribe who wrote the rest of the page). This long melisma was supposed to be sung on Alleluia and- as you can see- it is made of repetitive neumatic segments AA, BB, CC, DD (also in this case the colourful boxes show how the segments were split up).

The red arrows that you can see in the two examples point to erased portions of the parchment.
Can you find any affinity between the two erasures?
I will let you think about this… but I promise I will tell you more in the next episode :D

All best,

Elsa De Luca
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Elsa De Luca
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Dear Composers,

I am sure you cannot wait any longer to discover why the erasures in the two previous musical examples are so interesting... Here is the explanation:

As you already know, melismas are essentially made of repetitive neume patterns; observing the way melismas end throughout the 'Leon Antiphonary', it can be recognized an interesting habit by later scribes: in several cases they felt necessary to intervene and change the last neume(s) of the last repeated pattern.
This is exactly what happens in the previous Examples 1 and 2!!! :O

In palaeography tiny details can disclose a huge amount of information on the history of a manuscript... But it is necessary to observe them with an open mind and a lot of curiosity...

Very best wishes,

Elsa De Luca
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Elsa De Luca
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On the impact and versatility of research on early music

Today Emma Hornby and I had an exciting conversation about the neumes of the Leon Antiphonary and the music of the Old Hispanic Office with the public of the ongoing 5Hz exhibition by Artist Emma Smith at Arnolfini, Bristol.

5Hz is an interactive exhibition that invites audiences to experience a new human language. The concept of Emma Smith's work is to imagine an alternative evolution of voice and create a language that strengthens human connection. 5Hz is the result of a collaborative research process with psychologist Laurence White (Plymouth University), cognitive neuroscientist Nina Kazanina, and musicologist Emma Hornby (both University of Bristol). Building on this research, Emma Smith worked with Laurence White to create a language for the role of social bonding.

The exhibition introduces audiences to this new vocal practice through interactive events and installations including a sound chamber installation where visitors can try the language themselves, the presentation of the language's visual transcription, an interactive sound library and research space, fun online experiments, and live choral performances.

The Old Hispanic Chant and its peculiar notation - which conveys only partial musical information - have inspired Emma Smith in the realization of her project. Our participation in the exhibition turned into a fruitful conversation rich of questions on different aspects of the Old Hispanic Chant, its palaeography and performance.

Thank you very much to Emma Smith and to those who attended the exhibition today for their interest in our research! With their many questions they have proved how much intellectually stimulating the Old Hispanic Chant can be, even for people not familiar with early music!

Elsa De Luca
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Elsa De Luca
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Not only neumes!

Perhaps so far I have given you the impression that musical information is conveyed in the Leon Antiphonary *just* by neumes, but actually this manuscript contains a rich set of graphical elements used in conjunction with notation (and placed near to it).

Can you spot any of them in the picture attached? Any guess about their music-related meaning?

I promise to tell you more in my next post but in the meanwhile... give it a try!

Elsa De Luca
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LithaEfthymiou
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Thanks for this Elsa! As you know, I have started to delve into the world of melisma for my new composition. Although melisma can only be achieved with words and music, in my piece for string quartet I am trying to find ways of creating a sense of melisma through the music alone. This is proving quite difficult, but when the structure of the neume patterns are considered (as Elsa outlines above) one can find a way in….. watch this space!
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being
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What I've been wondering for quite a long time is why there are so many different variaties of neumes that have the same pitch structure. When I have a look at the list of for instance variations in notating a torculus I think there must have been a reason to have these variaties. Could it be that they are an indication of different rhythms?
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Raquel Rojo Carrillo
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Thank you so much for your interesting question! Yes, we think that there must be a reason for these neumatic varieties. Sadly, we cannot be sure of the specific musical variable that they might be depicting: different varieties of a neume could be referring to their rhythm, but it is also possible that they are representing an aspect of the performance of the sounds enclosed in the neume (a particular type of vocal delivery, a particular dynamic, etc.). Additionally, each Old Hispanic chant source has its own set of neumes representing a specific melodic readings - so, following your example, each source has its own torculus set, sometimes including torculus-shapes that might not appear in any other source. Furthermore, in the appearances of a particular chant in different sources we find that they do not use the exact same variety of torculus in the same places and in a consistent manner - this makes it even more difficult to accurately confirm what each of these varieties means.

Here's an example of the different types of torculus that you can find across sources transmitting the same chant, in this case the vespertinus In noctibus extollite, specifically in the word 'extollite'
Posted Image

Best wishes!
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being
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Thank you!

As I was experimenting a bit of cheironomia on the different torculi I thought maybe it could also indicate different intervals? Some gestures indicate a bigger leap than others.
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Elsa De Luca
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Elsa De Luca
Apr 7 2015, 12:00 AM
Not only neumes!

Perhaps so far I have given you the impression that musical information is conveyed in the Leon Antiphonary *just* by neumes, but actually this manuscript contains a rich set of graphical elements used in conjunction with notation (and placed near to it).

Can you spot any of them in the picture attached? Any guess about their music-related meaning?

I promise to tell you more in my next post but in the meanwhile... give it a try!

Elsa De Luca
Dear Composers,

Following up my last post Not only neumes! please find attached the picture of the responsory 'Egredere inter lilia' with the music-related signs highlighted.

Let's discuss each one of them:

RED BOXES: little ticks

Almost on every page of the Antiphonary there are some little ticks written with a light and thin pen-stroke. When these ticks are placed on the left of the neume, the pen-stroke is tilted to the right; while when the ticks are placed below the neume (like in the example with the star) the pen-stroke is tilted to the left.
Furthermore, the right-tilted ticks can appear near any kind of neume, while the left-tilted ticks respond to a strict rule: they are used ONLY in conjunction with certain neume shapes. Which ones? I won't tell you :D
Anyway, either tilted to the right or to the left, we do not know which kind of musical information these graphical devices activated in the mind of the singer who was reading from the Antiphonary... But you can use the concept of a recurring notational feature for inspiration in your (certainly amazing) compositions!

BLUE BOXES: signs drawn from notation but used to represent information other than melodic contour
Some graphs commonly used in notation could be also used for other purposes (not only in Leon 8, but in other Old Hispanic manuscripts as well!)

-'a' is signalling the double use of the same graph:
1) it is used in notation to represent a one-note neume written with a downward pen-stroke;
2) it is placed below the text to represent another music-related significance (unknown to us).
Even if the appearance of the graph is virtually the same in the two instances, it's its spatial placement which suggests that it bore two different meanings. The graph IS a neume when it is placed above the text (in the space for notation) and it is part of a series of neume shapes used in accordance to certain palaeographical rules. The graph carried ANOTHER meaning when placed below the text; its significance was probably chosen by convention by Old Hispanic scribes.
One additional palaeographical difference between the two uses of the graph is that: when the short pen-stroke is representing a neume, it can have different degrees of inclination (either to the right or to the left); while when the short pen-stroke is used below the text, it always has an inclination to the right (like in the example shown).

-'b' is signalling the use of two similar graphs. One is the 'M' neume which represents four notes (Neutral-Low-High-Low) and it is often found in cadences at the end of chants. The same shape, but strongly slanted, can be placed near the words, usually at the beginning of a new significant portion of the text. What is its meaning? I have no idea; but what I have observed is that 95% of the times this 'W' sign is placed at the beginning of a word, but the other 5% of the times... It is placed near some neumes in long melismas when there is no text whatsoever... :unsure:

-'c' represents two of my favourite uses of symbols taken from notation and used for other purposes: punctuation and letter's decoration. Easy-peasy, isn't it?

Furthermore... LATER HAND CHANGES: additions & erasures

The orange box on the right and the three black arrows are calling your attention to some later hand changes made on the original score: an additional verse (which comes with its neumes) and some erasures of the parchment (signalled by the three arrows).

The erasures come either at the beginning or end of melismas.
- Arrow 1: here it is probably the bottom part of a rising neume which has been deleted (the 'Neutral-High-High' neume attached is an example of rising neume).
- Arrow 2: a new four-note neume (melodic contour: Neutral-High-High-High) is written over the erasure. However, it is still possible to recognize an angular two-note neume (Neutral-High) partially deleted (see image attached)
- Arrow 3: in this case the neume erased has not been replaced. Can you see which neume was originally written here? Come on, you can do it.

Anyway, all my admiration to those of you who managed to read the whole post and especially to the one who will (?) recognize the neume signalled by arrow 3. If any of you manage to do so, I will offer you a caffe'

Best wishes,

Elsa De Luca
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Elsa De Luca
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being
May 1 2015, 09:22 AM
What I've been wondering for quite a long time is why there are so many different variaties of neumes that have the same pitch structure. When I have a look at the list of for instance variations in notating a torculus I think there must have been a reason to have these variaties. Could it be that they are an indication of different rhythms?

As I was experimenting a bit of cheironomia on the different torculi I thought maybe it could also indicate different intervals? Some gestures indicate a bigger leap than others.

Dear Being,

Your questions give me the chance to go deeper in the explanation of Leon 8's notation and tell you something more about the greatness of this manuscript.

Among the surviving Old Hispanic manuscripts León 8 has indeed
1) the richest set of graphical varieties for basic neume shapes (punctum, pes, torculus, climacus etc.) AND
2) the greatest assortment of graphical elements placed near the notation with the purpose of adding musical information (see my previous post).

To be honest with you, when I started studying this manuscript I was sceptical about the possibility that all those different graphs were meaningful. I thought they could be simply due to handwriting and scribal habits. Just to give you an example of meaningless scribal habit: I have a short and plain name and I could write my own signature in a very simple way but instead, it is very fancy, ornate and embellished… ^_^

It took a lot of time and observation to understand that yes, almost everything written near the text seems to be there for a (musical) reason. How did I work out this? It’s simple, I used comparative evidence B-)
Namely:
- Chants notated more than once.
- Chants made of repetitive verses sung on the same neume pattern.
- Neume patterns repeated between chants.
- Extensive melismas, which often contain repeated neume patterns.
Etc. etc.

Basically, I checked if variations in the precise neume shapes occur. If so, I made an evaluation of the nature of any varying note forms; it was important to identify variants in neume shapes that result from the vagaries of an individual scribe’s hand, rather than having a specific musical meaning.

In brief, what emerged from the internal comparison in León 8 is:
1) the astonishing similarity between cognate versions, even if they were written far apart AND
2) the deliberate and meaningful differentiation of neume graphs (in the picture attached - labelled ‘torculus_how many’ - you can see SOME of the shapes for this neume).

In other words, the plurality of signs used in León 8 to represent similar intervallic patterns reveals a huge potential of musical information provided by the notation!!! :O :O :O

In your question you refer to the ‘bigger leap’ in some gestures. I am not sure if you are referring here to the magnitude of the angle between two pen-strokes within the same neume or to the spatial placement of the neumes over the text. Either way, it seems plausible to believe that to a certain extent, length and inclination of the pen-stroke and spatial placement of the neumes had a musical meaning.

I cannot tell you exactly which one it was, but you can certainly feel free to attach any kind of musical ‘quality’ to the torculus shapes you see in the manuscripts. In your compositions you can ‘use’ the Old Hispanic notation as point of departure for your imagination...

I hope this helps! I’d be more than happy to answer any other question or to clarify better the methodology of this palaeographical research.

With my very best wishes,

Elsa De Luca
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