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3.15.1 Ancient note heads

For ancient notation, a note head style other than the default style may be chosen. This is accomplished by setting the style property of the NoteHead object to the desired value (baroque, neo_mensural or mensural). The baroque style differs from the default style only in using a square shape for \breve note heads. The neo_mensural style differs from the baroque style in that it uses rhomboidal heads for whole notes and all smaller durations. Stems are centered on the note heads. This style is in particular useful when transcribing mensural music, e.g. for the incipit. The mensural style finally produces note heads that mimic the look of note heads in historic printings of the 16th century.

The following example demonstrates the neo_mensural style

     \override NoteHead #'style = #'neo_mensural
     a'\longa a'\breve a'1 a'2 a'4 a'8 a'16

[image of music]

When typesetting a piece in Gregorian Chant notation, a Gregorian ligature engraver will automatically select the proper note heads, such there is no need to explicitly set the note head style. Still, the note head style can be set e.g. to vaticana_punctum to produce punctum neumes. Similarly, a mensural ligature engraver is used to automatically assemble mensural ligatures. See Ligatures for how ligature engravers work.

See also

In this manual Percussion staves use note head styles of their own that are frequently used in contemporary music notation.

Examples: input/regression/note-head-style.ly gives an overview over all available note head styles.

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