There is limited support for mensural time signatures. The
glyphs are hard-wired to particular time fractions. In other words,
to get a particular mensural signature glyph with the \time n/m
command, n
and m
have to be chosen according to the
following table
Use the style
property of grob TimeSignature to
select ancient time signatures. Supported styles are
neo_mensural
and mensural
. The above table uses the
neo_mensural
style. This style is appropriate e.g. for the
incipit of transcriptions of mensural pieces. The mensural
style mimics the look of historical printings of the 16th century.
input/test/time.ly gives an overview over all available ancient and modern styles.
Program reference: Time signature gives a general introduction into the use of time signatures.
Mensural signature glyphs are mapped to time fractions in a hard-wired
way. This mapping is sensible, but still arbitrary: given a mensural
time signature, the time fraction represents a modern meter that
usually will be a good choice when transcribing a mensural piece of
music. For a particular piece of mensural music, however, the mapping
may be unsatisfactory. In particular, the mapping assumes a fixed
transcription of durations (e.g. brevis = half note in 2/2, i.e. 4:1).
Some glyphs (such as the alternate glyph for 6/8 meter) are not at all
accessible through the \time
command.
Mensural time signatures are supported typographically, but not yet musically. The internal representation of durations is based on a purely binary system; a ternary division such as 1 brevis = 3 semibrevis (tempus perfectum) or 1 semibrevis = 3 minima (cum prolatione maiori) is not correctly handled: event times in ternary modes will be badly computed, resulting e.g. in horizontally misaligned note heads, and bar checks are likely to erroneously fail.
The syntax and semantics of the \time
command for mensural
music is subject to change.
Read comments on this page, or
add one.
This page is for LilyPond-2.2.6 (stable-branch). |