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marinmarais
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2009
Total Posts : 2

Posted 10/31/2009 5:51 PM (GMT -5)

I hope that you can help me please:

I'm a mexican musician and baroque music researcher.

In these days arrived to my hands a rare and magnificent document, sheet music composed by a mexican genius woman.

I have never had problems passing to actual musical notation the scores I work with, but I have a problem now, this is not baroque notation...

The facsimilar that I have consists of 4 pages, Soprano I part: http://www.freeimagehosting.net/image.php?e7e3141159.jpg, Soprano II part http://www.freeimagehosting.net/image.php?2da593afbb.jpg, Alto http://www.freeimagehosting.net/image.php?9709e1f827.jpg and Bass http://www.freeimagehosting.net/image.php?72487ec966.jpg

Could you help me giving me an idea of how transcribe it into actual notation?
There are no barlines, I see some crotchets (quarters) without stems, beside crotchets with stems, and minims (half) with flags! And about the rests, they are very confusing!

I tried to transcribe it "2:1" but, the minims (half) with flags do not help me, I don't know what to do!

Could you help me?

Arturo Escorza.

Mike Rosen
himself

Date Joined Feb 2006
Total Posts : 6722

Posted 10/31/2009 6:53 PM (GMT -5)

Arturo,
Welcome to the forum. The man you want is Wiggy! I'm sure he'll see your post, and jump right on it with some suggestions.

Mike Rosen
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Wiggy
Early music: modern methods

Date Joined Jun 2006
Total Posts : 4723

Posted 11/1/2009 6:28 AM (GMT -5)

Wow.

OK, first things first. Yes, there are no barlines. This is to be expected. The piece starts in a standard "C" meter, which means that all notes are divided in two, i.e. 2 crotchets to a mimim, 2 minims to a semibreve, 2 semibreves to a breve, etc. The opening rest is a crotchet rest. Minim and semibreve rests are the same as these days: breve rests take up the full space. Continued rests are just multiples of these units, a bit like those for multiple measure rests.

The second half of the music is a bit more complex. There's a symbol at the front, which I can't really make out, but I suspect it invokes a triple time in some way. Time signatures, such as they were, simply implied two or three of a note to the next biggest note. So there may be 3 minims to a semibreve, and/or 3 semibreves to a breve and/or 3 breves to a long.
The "coloured" notes - i.e. black semibreves - signify the reduction of the note value by a third. So their value depends on whether the current meter is 3 notes or 2 notes to the next bigger note value! Here, I suspect that the black crotchets are actually 1/3 minims. The other 2/3rd of the beat is invariably followed with a black semibreve.

There will be some differences in what some things mean depending on exactly when this was written. Who is the composer?

There's some information on how to read "mensural" notation here:
ieee.uwaterloo.ca/praetzel/mp3-cd/info/raybro/index1.html

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marinmarais
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2009
Total Posts : 2

Posted 1/20/2010 2:09 PM (GMT -5)

Hello! I'm very sorry for delaying so much in answering!, I wasn't in Mexico, I was in Eastern Europe.

Thank you very much for the information you gave me,
I'm still suffering a lot with this score!

This piece was composed by Juana de Asuaxe, ca. 1680. In America, the musical styles delayed some decades before they arrived to America.

Patrick Rice
Registered Member

Date Joined Mar 1999
Total Posts : 90

Posted 1/28/2010 11:33 PM (GMT -5)

Arturo,
Here's a transcription that I think is fairly close. The only real harmonic anomaly is the cross relation in bar 42. Otherwise things allign pretty well rhythmically and harmonically.
Some of the weird mensural things in this notation are the use of blackened semibreves and minims. They are equivalent to white semibreves and minims - at least that appears to be the case. Her use of flagged minims to denote a crochet (to differentiate it from a blackened minim) leads me to think that's the reason she used black notes for that rhythmic pattern. The alto was the most difficult part to transcribe, and I may be totally out to lunch on that. The dotted blackened G in measure 31 doesn't make sense, but it's the only thing that fits - unless nothing that I did really fits. But hey...
The two minims that follow that dotted long expand to a minim and a semibreve in this mensural setting. A great book (if you want to really get into transcribing this stuff) is "The Notation of Polyphonic Music 900-1600" by Apel.
I don't speak Spanish, but it seems that the lyric underlay pretty well matches what I came up with rhythmically.
Hope this helps. Let me know how it all turns out.

Pat

Patrick Rice
Transcriber - Engraver
www.pdreditions.com

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Patrick Rice
Registered Member

Date Joined Mar 1999
Total Posts : 90

Posted 1/28/2010 11:43 PM (GMT -5)

Whoa. I just looked at this and the jpg is garbage. There's a pdf at www.pdreditions.com/Get_it
Pat

Patrick Rice
Transcriber - Engraver
www.pdreditions.com

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