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marinmarais
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2009
Total Posts : 1

Posted 10/31/2009 4:51 PM (GMT -6)

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 : 5379

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

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
www.specialmillwork.com

WebMaster for the Seattle SeaChordsmen www.seachordsmen.org
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Print Music 2004, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010
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Favorite reference: Essential Dictionary of Music Notation, Gerou & Lusk, 1996

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Wiggy
Early music: modern methods

Date Joined Jun 2006
Total Posts : 3657

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

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

Finale 2009c, 2Ghz iMac; 2Ghz MacBook, 10.6.1
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