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Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 20:46:37 +0000
Subject: Re: Question about note symbols
From: Hylton Boothroyd <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: mutex list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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> At present time, MusiXTeX fonts contain a symbol like
> |O|
> for notes of undefined durations (i.e. in psalms). But I get a request
> of symbols like:
> ||O||

I was away from my books and music Daniel posted his message. My main
interest is in church music that can be used now, but I have quite a
collection of music of various vintages and of reference books that cite
early usage. I claim no authority of my own.

General usage in English music
==============================
The general household reference book for music in England is "The Oxford
Companion to Music" written by an entertainingly eccentric Englishman in
1938 and still in print after many editions. I'll use his English/French/
/American names for notes from the 1970 edition and apologize here for not
knowing well enough any of the naming conventions in this newsgroup.

His opening pages on notation and nomenclature recognise

||O|| the breve/carree/double whole-note
O the semibreve/ronde/whole-note

and so on down to the hemidemisemiquaver/quadruplecroche/sixty-fourth note.
That is, the |O| isn't part of his normal nomenclature and I didn't find a
reference to it in any of the likely places I could think of.

So my first reaction was that MusiXTeX is bound to have ||O|| as part of its
normal set of symbols and that if it doesn't I don't know how Daniel has
escaped for so long! However, I've read this group for long enough to know
that if he thinks there is a problem then there really is.

My guess is firstly that he has given |O| some properties that normal notes
don't have (and vice versa), and that secondly he is being asked to have two
symbols that look alike but have different properties: a normal breve ||O||
and an undetermined breve ||O||.

I think the gist of what follows is that there is enough evidence from 20th
century usage to support having an undetermined ||O|| for chant-like
singing. However, the evidence perhaps needs a bit more categorisation than
the replies so far have suggested.

20th century usage and non-usage in psalms and canticles
======================================================= =
Anglican chant
--------------
Modern Anglican chant has no use for either |O| or ||O||.

The standard details of Anglican [Church of England] chant still in
widespread use for psalms (you can hear two of my young grandsons singing it
in St George's Church, Windsor Castle most days of the year) was pretty well
settled by the "Cathedral Psalter" of 1875. The standard form of a double
chant is

r | m m | s || r | m m | m m | s || r | m m | s || r | m m | m m | s ||

where the single verticals are single bar-lines and the double verticals are
double bar-lines, and where the notes are printed as

r (the reciting note) as a semibreve/ronde/whole-note
m, a minim/blanche/half-note
s, a semibreve/ronde/whole-note.

That is, no distinction is made in print between the reciting note of
indeterminate length and closing note of a phrase, and no use is made of the
|O| or the ||O||. In effect, everything the chorister needs to know is
encoded in the bar-structure of the four parts of the chant.

Perhaps I should add that although there is some degree of rhythmic
structure away from the reciting notes, good modern practice is to regard
*all* notes as of indeterminate length to fit the choral speech structure of
the words.

Anglican pseudo plain-song in Anglican chant notation
-----------------------------------------------------
I've found one Anglican psalter example of ||O|| for the undetermined
reciting note of a non-psalm text. The Cathedral Psalter of 1875 has it. I
haven't found it in current psalters.

The Quicunque Vult (Whosoever will be saved) is a sort of extended
catechism. The words are set (in English) in what appears to be a simplified
plain chant harmonised in Anglican chant style -

r s s || r s s ||

where there are only double bar lines and the notes are printed as

r (the reciting note) as a breve/carree/double whole-note
s as a semibreve/ronde/whole-note

and where the second s of the first part is to be sung only if the last word
of the phrase has more than one syllable.

It is an open question whether the breves were used to signify reciting as
part of an otherwise unrepresented convention and the semibreves followed as
the next shorter notes, or whether the semibreves were settled first and the
breves followed simply as the next longer notes.

The New Cathedral Psalter of 1910 presented the chant for the Quicunque Vult
as
s s s || s s s ||

More recent psalters drop it altogether.

Explaining Anglican chant
-------------------------
I've found one example in an Anglican psalter of using |O| to explain the
performance of English chant.

The preface, and the preface only, of the New Cathedral Psalter of 1910 used
your undefined duration symbol as part of its apparatus for trying to
explain how to chant. I'll call it u.

The editors had a very strong concept of arhythmic reciting on the reciting
note followed by flexible but strictly rhythmic completion of the phrase.
Of their 26 examples, 24 start with u and are followed by an ever more
wondrous collection of half notes (plain or dotted, in duple or triple time
to the bar) and quarter notes (plain only, but again in duple or triple),
the whole including a seasoning of syncopation to go with word stresses!

I don't know whether their expository apparatus was ever repeated. It
certainly doesn't form part of the current set of Royal School of Church
Music's training materials (RSCM for short).

[Off topic]
The text of the psalms throughout that psalter also had some innovative
features, one of which was the use of heavy bold type to show the final
stressed syllable on the reciting note *and its unstressed successors* on
the reciting note. As a 14 year old boy I was invited to become the
organist of the church in the next village. Guess what the village choirmen
did to every one of those syllables in heavy bold type! That's right. Hit
each one as a hard as they could.
[On topic]

Anglican Versicles and Responses
--------------------------------
I've found a regularly used example of undetermined ||O|| in a separate area
of Anglican music.

The RSCM publishes an 8-page A5 booklet with its pointing for the main
canticles (Venite, Te Deum and so on) and with the full four-part harmony
for two short sets of responses that are part of sung Anglican Matins and
sung Anglican Evensong for ordinary occasions.

With one exception there are no intermediate bar-lines in the phrases
(versicles) that the minister sings nor in the phrases that the choir sings
in response. Eight of the minister's ten phrases, and nine of the ten choir
responses start with a breve/carree/double whole-note that is clearly
intended to signify the reciting note.

The rest makes a free ad hoc use of normal notation to get an effect midway
between harmonised plainchant and Anglican chant.

So, it appears that modern Anglicans don't have much use for either of
Daniel's symbols, but that where they do particularly want to show a
reciting note outside the context of psalms they use an undetermined ||O||,
and would expect to find it as a breve in any music type-setting system.

Roman Catholic Chant for English Psalms
---------------------------------------
There is a strand of non-Anglican chanting in England that uses the
undetermined |O| as standard for the reciting note.

In the mid 20th century Dom Gregory Murray had a great influence on music
for English Roman Catholics. His way of doing psalms is nowadays used
occasionally in Anglican and other English churches to give variety in
services that don't follow the traditional English Prayer Book.

I thought I had some of his original material on my shelves, but all I have
is a three-volume set of psalms published in the 1970's and saying it
follows "the pattern originally developed by DGM". The chants are sung in
unison though a simple harmonic accompaniment is provided.

The equivalent of the Anglican double chant is notated as

u c c s ' u c c s ' u c c s ' u c c s ||



where the ' are half bar-lines on the upper stave, || a double bar and


u is Daniel's undetermined duration symbol |O|
c is crotchet/noire/quarter-note
s is semibreve/ronde/whole-note

although 7 of a set of 39 chants by various composers uniformly have s for
u.

Examples of earlier Usage
=========================
I pass.

My main interest is hymnody. Not quite the same thing, and not usually
needing undetermined note values.

Just two rather off-topic snippets from light browsing

1.
In Erik Routley's "The Music of Christian Hymns" GIA 1981, the chapter "The
Developed Psalm Tunes" has examples from around the 1550's include several
which start with
a single C-clef, a single note, a double bar line,
a treble clef, and then the chant-cum-tune.
The single note is usually a semibreve, but two of them are Daniel's |O|

2.
In Maurice Frost's "Historical Companion to Hymns Ancient and Modern"
William Clowes 1962 the musical examples are limited to those where the
sources of tunes in current use diverge significantly from their originals.

Some of the examples from the German 1500's consist entirely of a mix of O
and ||O||.




Hylton