Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

(vii) English practice.

Sanders (1962) has convincingly demonstrated that pairs or longer chains of lozenges (‘English breves’) used in English manuscripts dating up to about 1300 signify 1st-mode rhythms (L–B, L–B etc.). Such breves appear in D-W Guelf.628 (677) (even in the non-English works: for facs. of Perotinus's Sederunt see Sources, MS, §IV, fig.30), GB-Lbl Harl.978 (in which some pieces have been ‘reformed’ by adding tails to alternate lozenges to make them longs) and the Worcester Fragments (earlier layers). Johannes de Garlandia and Anonymus 4 both reported that the English interpreted ternary ligatures in what has become known as ‘alternative 3rd mode’ (3b in Table 6. Similarly, Wibberly (EECM, xxvi) argued that certain nuances in the slanting of ligatured notes by English scribes may reflect an attempt to distinguish between complementary insular and continental rhythmic practices.

Notation, §III, 2: Polyphony and secular monophony to c1260

(viii) Mensural notation before Franco.

Clarification of ambiguities in modal notation already appears in the earliest Parisian sources, though inconsistently, and in the theory of Johannes de Garlandia. Such specifications affected the appearance of discrete note shapes, ligatures and to a lesser extent rests.

The pressure towards the codification of note forms seems indebted to the motet (see Motet, §I). Many early 13th-century motets were clausulas with text added to their upper voice or voices; because the text usually set a separate syllable to every pitch, the ligatures of clausulas were thus split into single notes. Hence in older sources the music of motets was often available in melismatic notations as clausulas, but in texted form with undifferentiated note heads.

All the chief sources of Parisian polyphony up to about 1260 may distinguish between a single long and a single breve in instances involving repeated notes (the long with a downward stem attached to its right-hand side, the breve without). The opening of the organum quadruplum Sederunt has already been cited; another example is the clausula Mulierum (Apel, 1942, facs.52a). Double longs are also frequently distinguished by horizontal elongation (see above, ex.6).

In mensural sources certain conventions regarding the value of the discrete notes were observed. A long contained three tempora if followed by another long (as in mode 5), and two tempora if succeeded (mode 1) or preceded (mode 2) by a breve; pairs of breves (mode 3) were interpreted in the order brevis recta (one tempus) – brevis altera (two tempora), except by the English, who preferred the opposite interpretation (see above, §2(vii)).

The semibreve (single lozenge) attained its shape at about the time of De mensurabili musica (c1240–60); but it is rare in sources from this period. (Both Garlandia and Anonymus 4, however, used the term semibrevis to refer to half a brevis altera; see Sanders, 1962, p.267.) The earliest surviving manuscripts clearly and consistently making the distinction are rather later: F-Pn n.a.fr.13521 (‘La Clayette MS’) and GB-Lbl 30091, from the end of the 13th century. Other important steps concerned the clarification of ligatures. Theorists conferred qualities of ‘propriety’ (proprietas) and ‘perfection’ (perfectio) on the traditional chant-based shapes of modal rhythm. The former term referred to the first note of the ligature – whether it was drawn ‘properly’ (cum proprietate) or not (sine proprietate) – the latter originally specified whether the note shape concluded in a regular manner (cum perfectione) or denoted a ‘broken’ or ‘unfinished’ figure (hence ‘imperfect’, sine perfectione). Fig.51 gives the basic shapes and their alterations. The meaning of the modifications (as well as the default forms) depended on the individual theorist. Garlandia, for example, held that lack of propriety reversed the default values of an entire two- or three-note ligature (a proper, perfect B–L thus became L–B, and L–B–L inverted to B–L–B), whereas imperfect ligatures needed to be reconstituted to perfect forms according to the context of the phrase. Franco's innovation was to specify undeviating values for ligatures of all types and to equate propriety and perfection respectively with the durations of only the first and last notes of a figure. (For a comparative table drawn from several theorists, see Reimer, 1972, i, 56.)

The ligature that became known as ‘having opposite propriety’ (cum opposita proprietate), written with an ascending stroke to the left, is first seen in D-W 1099. Garlandia was the earliest theorist to describe such a ligature, but whereas he interpreted it in a manner akin to fractio modi (with the last note as a long and all others equal to a breve), later practice was to read the first two notes as semibreves and the remainder according to the rules of perfection (see below, §III, 3). An alternative form of the descending ligature cum opposita proprietate had three lozenges with a tail descending obliquely from the left of the first, and is found in some French and many English manuscripts.

Johannes de Garlandia used a stroke through one space of the staff for a breve rest and a stroke through two or more for a long (number of tempora undifferentiated). Magister Lambertus used a stroke through one space for the semibreve rest, through two for the brevis recta, three for the brevis altera and longa imperfecta, and four for the longa perfecta (a practice found in D-BAs lit.115). Franco used strokes through the lower portion of a space for semibreve rests, and one complete space for each tempus. The duration of the two-tailed plica might also be differentiated. The plicated breve had either a very short tail to the right or a single tail to the left, the plicated long a long tail to the right and a shorter one to the left. English scribes used a lozenge with a tail descending obliquely to the left for a semibreve.

Notation, §III, 2: Polyphony and secular monophony to c1260