On 29 Jun 2005 at 11:48, John Howell wrote: > I think that what he provided (or someone in his circle did) an > actual notational means to indicate duple subdividion called > "coloration," literally done by switching to red ink for the duple > passages, and after white notation caught on in the 15th century by > using black notation for the duples. But reading between the lines, > why would he have developed coloration if he and other musicians were > not already using duple subdivision (which was theoretically possible > even the the 13th century Frankonian notation by indicating perfect or > imperfect tempus and prolation, even though the music of the time was > predominently in triple subdivision).
Well, it's not always the case that practice comes before theorization. It's not pretty much accepted that Edward Roesner's hypothesis that the 2nd mode in modal, pre-Garlandian notation (i.e., short-long) is a construct that came into the music only after a theoretical structure was created to describe the whole rhythmic system. That is, it was the theoretical structure that implied the existence of the short-long rhythmic mode, to balance out the other parts of the theory. Dunno why I went into that -- I meant to just comment on the fact that it's amazing how long white/black notation lasted. I'm in a group doing lots of French music from around 1700 (Charpentier, François Couperin, Bernier, Clerambault, etc.). Black notation occurs frequently in Charpentier's MSS, even when it could be notated clearly in the current metric framework. It seems to be something of a visual marker for the pre-cadential hemiola, even when there is no need for some special symbol to indicate it. -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
