# Help with mensural notation



## obwan (Oct 24, 2011)

Please excuse me if this is the wrong category I didn't know where else to put it.

I recently started learning a few pieces from Der Fluyten Lusthof, the massive recorder solo book by Jacob Van der eyck. It is entirely in white mensural notation, and for the most part I don't know what I'm doing. I've had a little bit of success playing rubato, and ad libing rtyhmic durations, and mostly playing b's flat. That is to say I can make some pieces _sound_ musical this way, though whether thats actually what its supposed to sound like is beyond me. And then there are the other pieces, no matter what I do, they just don't sound musical at all.

I've read about such and such on how to interpret tempus perfectum vs imperfectum, but I don't understand it, now I'm reading contracting things. first i read a dot meants to change from perfectum vx imperfectum, but now I read a doted half note means the same thing as today, a doted half note. And I still havn't found an explanation for why some measures have 4 beats and others 6, with no indication of changing 'perfection'

(If mensural notation has no bar lines... what I'm reading from does.... so maybe its a little bit letter like from the early baroque as opposed to renaisance.)

Listening to youtubes after I have worked on some of the pieces, each rendition seems to be different from how I play... and I swear they are all ommiting notes! they must be reading from a modern transcription? in my copy there is a repeated note (sounds odd to mee too... maybe they're just eliminating it by choice as I have done) at the end of the phrase in bar 8 (just before the repeat) of "doen daphne d'over schoone maeght", but no one seems to play it. Why?

I have lots of other questions too, i will probably think of them as I progress...
If anyone can help or discuss mensural notation, Thanks!


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

I have never even heard of it before, so I am not of much use here, but I notice there is a quite long and detailed Wikipedia article on it, that may be of some use:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensural_notation


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## obwan (Oct 24, 2011)

thanks brianvds but the article is a little bit technical for me.... i'm looking for something a little more straight forward and easier to understand..


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

obwan said:


> thanks brianvds but the article is a little bit technical for me.... i'm looking for something a little more straight forward and easier to understand..


I have a feeling that article is about as straightforward as it is going to get with this.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Yup. The other "problem" with this is that at this time a lot of the tricks weren't written down on the actual music and performers had to interpret. It's a bit like the way some baroque can be played where you have to judge whether what you have is a 9/8 or a 3/4 in triplet rhythm and so on.

You really need to get a modern transcription or else learn the notation and the performance styles of the period you're aiming for.

Not pleasant.


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## obwan (Oct 24, 2011)

What about listening to other performances? There are plenty of Der Fluyten Lust hof on youtube. I remember my piano instructor once telling me that in general this is a bad habbit. But I've already been playing Pavane Lachryme for several days now and am already getting a good feel for the theme and the first modo. (which i guess means variation....) I had wanted to practice it up, record myself, and only then listen to youtubes of it, to gauge how my interpretation stacks up to those of others. But now the tempting is so strong... I can't bare to wait any longer. I'm going to watch a youtube of just the theme and the first modus.... I'm so curious about the tempo. I've been playing the thematic intro slow, but when it comes to the first variation I've been playing it quite fast... it just sounds better to me that way... but if I'm reading the rthyms wrong... that could really throw me off.

Is there anyone that can at least explain to me the rules for "The time value of some notes could change according to their immediate context in certain situations. " as quoted from wikipedia? Am I to understand that 2 half notes regardless of perfect or imperfect would be played the same, but a half note followed by a quater note would change perfection? That has got to be too confusing to be accurate...l can someone explain this to me?


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

obwan said:


> ..Is there anyone that can at least explain to me the rules for "The time value of some notes could change according to their immediate context in certain situations. " as quoted from wikipedia? Am I to understand that 2 half notes regardless of perfect or imperfect would be played the same, but a half note followed by a quatrer note would change perfection? That has got to be too confusing to be accurate...l can someone explain this to me?


Study (carefully) the "Sumer is icumen in" example and the "imperfection and alteration" table. Basically, there are no bar lines. There is no anacrusis so everything starts on the first beat of the the first measure. Once you work out your time signature, you can then start working it out into modern measures. If you have two long notes or a long and a rest together, they're "perfect" i.e. dotted. If you have a pattern of long short long short, then the longs are "imperfect i.e. not dotted. The example has the perfect notes marked and a transcription into modern measures so that you can see what is happening.

In some ways, it's a bit like hornpiping a reel (tune in 4/4) in quavers by dotting the first quaver and shortening the second. If you play that sort of thing you get a feel for it. You can do something similar with a Bach gigue by altering the tempo within a group of three quavers and again, if you know what you're aiming for, you get a (very) Irish jig feel to it.

That's what I meant earlier by saying you have to learn the rules or else get a modern transcription or even both.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

obwan said:


> Is there anyone that can at least explain to me the rules for "The time value of some notes could change according to their immediate context in certain situations. "


The method whereby note values are determined by their context rather than by their shape is a carry-over from quantitative meter, the system that preceded mensural rhythm. (A quick Google search did not pull up any useful sources on quantitative meter as it applies to music, so you might have to go the old-fashioned way and consult a book. I would suggest Richard Hoppin's _Medieval Music._) The two systems overlapped for a bit and were not consistently followed in different regions, so reconstructing the "rules" is an enormously difficult task, and no one is likely to arrive at the "correct" rhythmic interpretation of a particular piece.

The gist of it is that in quantitative meter, there are two basic note values: long and short, just like in poetry. Whether a particular note was a long note or a short note depended on the other notes with which they were grouped. There was no way to look at a single note and determine its length; instead, you had to look at the ligatures to which it belonged. In order to perform music in quantitative meter, you just have to be familiar with the conventions associated with each type of ligature.

When mensural notation came along, as the Wikipedia article notes, some of those conventions were retained. So, even though mensuration enabled musicians to determine the value of a single note regardless of the notes around it, certain rhythmic patterns based on groupings of notes were still retained. So that's what the Wikipedia article means when it says "The time value of some notes could change according to their immediate context in certain situations."


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## obwan (Oct 24, 2011)

Ok what form of musical notation was used in 17th century? because that is what I'm reading. it looks a lot like the notation in the wikipedia article on mensuration, but it does have BAR lines and does not have these "ligatures" things. and what does "they're perfect, i.e. dottet" mean?.... as i understand it dotted does not mean perfect


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

Mensural notation gradually evolved into what we know today during the 17th century.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

obwan said:


> Ok what form of musical notation was used in 17th century?


By the seventeenth century, mensural notation was definitely more common than quantitative meter.



obwan said:


> what does "they're perfect, i.e. dottet" mean?


"Perfect" means the note value subdivides into three, while "imperfect" means it subdivides into two. Thus, when transcribing a perfect note value into modern rhythmic notation, it will take the form of a dotted note since dotted notes are our way of notating a note value that subdivides into three. That's what is meant by "they're perfect, i.e. dotted."


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## obwan (Oct 24, 2011)

so a dotted whole note, is a whole note plus a half note, or another way of thinking about it is as 3 half notes? Interesting I'd never thought of it like that before.


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## obwan (Oct 24, 2011)

ok but how to play it? so if your playing along nicely at a moderately fast tempo in in tempus imperfectum and then have to change to imperfectum.... what note is going to get the beat to keep the same tiempo? the whole note in tempus imperfectum is equal to a whole note in tempus perfectum, or is it a sixteenth note = a sixteenth note?

I don't know if i made myself clear.... which unit is considered the "base" unit? or maybe it doesn't make a difference... let me think about this for a moment....


In modern notation a whole note is equal to 2 half notes, 4 quarter notes, 8 eigth notes, 16 sixteenth notes.
In tempus perfectum a whole note is equal to 3 half notes, each of which are equal to 3 quarter notes, ergo a whole note = 9 quarter notes. a quarter note = 3 eigth notes so a whole note = 27 eigth notes and thusly a whole note = 81 sixteenth notes. 

Is that correct? 

So if I'm counting away quarters when it changes perfection am I screwed?


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Read it as 6/4. Look again at the "Sumer is icumen in" example. There are two beats to the bar because it's compound triple - there are two groups of three to a bar. So it's *1* 2 3 *4* 5 6 for a bar with the beats falling on the bold notes. If you've got a dotted note it uses the whole 3 count, a half note uses 1 and 2 and the quarter note uses the 3.

Hope that helps. If you're not used to 6/4 read it as 6/8 (jig time).


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

obwan said:


> In tempus perfectum a whole note is equal to 3 half notes, each of which are equal to 3 quarter notes


Close. I'll try to explain, but it's difficult to do using only words so bear with me.

Strictly speaking, "tempus" pertains to the subdivision of breves, not whole notes. So "tempus perfectum" does not mean a whole note equals three half notes; it means a breve equals three whole notes. If you double the note values of the above quoted sentence, then the first half of it becomes correct.

The second half is not necessarily correct. Having established that the tempus is perfect (i.e. that a breve equals three whole notes), you can't assume that the whole notes in turn equal three half notes. The subdivision of whole notes into half notes is, in a way, totally independent from the subdivision of breves into whole notes. The word "tempus" refers only to the latter; the word "prolatio" or "prolation" refers to the former. Prolation can come in two varieties, just like tempus: either it subdivides into three or it subdivides into two. A prolation that subdivides into three is called a "major prolation" (analagous to a perfect tempus); a prolation that subdivides into two is called a "minor prolation" (analagous to an imperfect tempus).

Thus it is possible to have a perfect tempus + _major_ prolation (the breve subdivides into three whole notes, and the whole notes subdivide into three half notes), or to have a perfect tempus + _minor_ prolation (the breve subdivides into three whole notes, and the whole notes subdivide into _two_ half notes); it is also possible to have an _im_perfect tempus + major prolation as well as an imperfect tempus + minor prolation. (This is illustrated in the "Mensuration Signs" table of the above cited Wikipedia page.)

Converting this into modern notation is where it gets tricky. Suppose we have a perfect tempus + major prolation. That's three whole notes to the breve, and three half notes to the whole note. This type of meter is _analagous_ to (but not the exact equivalent of; see below) what we call 9/8 time. In 9/8 time, the modern dotted quarter plays the same metrical role (again, see below) of the medieval breve while the modern eighth note plays the same metrical role of the medieval half note. In both cases, there's three of the big notes which subdivide into three of the small notes.

The reason this is confusing is that, as I said, the word "tempus" refers to the subdivision of breves into whole notes while the word "prolation" refers to the subdivision of whole notes into half notes, and yet when we translate these into modern terms we tend to use quarter notes and eighth notes. It seems like if we wanted the translation to be more literal, we should notate the music in "9/2," for example: nine _modern_ half notes per measure, just as perfect tempus + major prolation would have nine _medieval_ half notes per measure. That way the medieval whole note would translate into the modern whole note while the medieval half note would translate into the modern half note.

But we don't do this: we tend to use 9/8 rather than 9/2 as the modern equivalent of perfect tempus + major prolation. To be honest, I'm not totally sure why; my guess is that it's simply easier for us to read 9/8 than 9/2. That's why, above, I said that the modern dotted quarter plays the same _metrical role_ as the medieval breve, even though the modern dotted quarter is not the _notational equivalent_ of the medieval breve. (The notational equivalent of the medieval breve is, again, the modern whole note; the former is the ancestor of the latter.) By "metrical role," I mean that the modern dotted quarter is the most convenient way for us to read a piece of music that was written in perfect tempus + minor prolation.

My apologies if none of this made sense. I realize I haven't answered all your questions yet; more to come!


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## obwan (Oct 24, 2011)

Wow fabulously well written. You have saved me not hours but years. I now know that I'd rather be a rocket scientist than learn how to read mensural notation. 

Lol, no actually you make quite a bit of sense. But one follow up question is if Breve dividing into 3 is called tempus perfectum, and semi-breve into 3 is called major prolation, what is it called when you divide a half note in 3, or a quarter note etc etc?


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

obwan said:


> if Breve dividing into 3 is called tempus perfectum, and semi-breve into 3 is called major prolation, what is it called when you divide a half note in 3, or a quarter note etc etc?


I don't think the half-note or quarter-note subdivisions had official names; if they do, I haven't heard of them. I don't think such names were necessary, as half-notes or quarter-notes were never used to measure the basic pulse of a piece. Breves and whole notes were the standard "units of measurement" for meter.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

obwan said:


> so if your playing along nicely at a moderately fast tempo in in tempus imperfectum and then have to change to imperfectum.... what note is going to get the beat to keep the same tiempo?


It's a difficult question to answer because medieval meter isn't organized according to "beats" the same way modern meter is. Mensural rhythm is organized around time, not pulse. In a mensurally notated piece, the thing that stays constant from measure to measure is the amount of time that each measure takes up, not the number of beats or accents within it. That's what makes this music so difficult to perform: when you're playing a piece and the tempus changes from perfect to imperfect, for example, all you really know is that the imperfect measure has to be played in the same amount of time as the perfect measure, and reconstructing the exact rhythm of the measure itself becomes a matter of guesswork; based on the few scant clues that the music gives you (ligatures as well as proportions and colorations) you sort of have to fiddle with different combinations of duple and triple subdivisions until you arrive at something that fits. It's an exasperatingly imprecise way to notate rhythm, of course, which is why different recordings of the same piece can vary greatly. It's also why the whole system was gutted and reinvented at the start of the Baroque period, and the results are more or less the rhythmic notation we now have today.


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## obwan (Oct 24, 2011)

Eschbeg said:


> all you really know is that the imperfect measure has to be played in the same amount of time as the perfect measure, and reconstructing the exact rhythm of the measure itself becomes a matter of guesswork


which is what I meant by playing it 'rubato', since I cant possiply understand what was *meant* to be played I sort of guess. its a little like the rubiat of omar khayam as translated by f scott fitzgerald, he didn't speak arabic, but he sure could translate it. by that I mean, i try to figure out the best combination of rythms within each measure, and as long as the end result sounds musical, whose complaining? Although one day maybe i will have the time to research this system more properly...


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