Il y a tout juste 6 ans nous avons discuté dans ce même groupe du manuscrit Clm 4301 de la Bayerische Staatsbibliothek de München.
Dominique Crochu avait justement fait remarqué que les hymnes iambiques n'étaient pas en notation mensurale et Luca Ricossa avait dit qu'en absence d'indications positives on ne pouvait pas se prononcer sur la manière dont ces hymnes étaient chantées.
Hier, un fragment italien de la fin du XIIIème siècle a été vendu sur ebay et il présente les mêmes caractéristiques que le Clm 4301, à savoir des hymnes en notation mensurale et d'autre en notation italienne.
Et nous pouvons constater que dans les deux sources, ce sont les mêmes hymnes qui sont notées en notation mensurale ou en notation non mensurale (?) :
Aurea luce et decore
Fragment ebay :
Clm 4301 :
Martiris christi
Fragment ebay :
Clm 4301 :
Replies
Thanks! In effect, I saw some other manuscripts that could be also considered as an intermediate stage. Therefore, it could be precarious to establishe a definite separation between them, or could be prone to fail.
I agree. In some late Ambrosian mss I have found notational features representing (maybe) an intermediate stage between non-mensural and mensural notation of some hymns.
In synthesis, what I was trying to explaing previously is that the mensural factor was more evident later.Therefore, it remains complicate to impose a system adequate for all the conditions at this stage; unless it is considered only for the moment when was composed, or created.
Of course it comes from Central Italy, but what is not highlighted here is the fact that we are talking about a manuscript in the first stage of diastematic notation.In other terms, the sway run of the 'notes'was dictated by the expression of the single indications. Something that slowly changed in the following centuries(obviously)...Thus is to highlight that the key referral viewpoint is F and C underlined with the respective lines overall.Whereas in the next stage, the copyists were more preoccupied to give a predominant and stable outcome specifically for the melodic pattern.
Angelo Rusconi said:
(indication of rhytm and expression: rare in the Ambrosian notation, of course)
Only two short remarks:
a) maybe we do not have to think to only one solution for an entire repertory: each piece (hymn, chanson, lauda…) has a special history, so some hymns could have been born and sung "mensurally", others not. Of course, we have to distinguish different age of compositions, new melodies, contexts etc,
b) in the Italian fragment I see a special climacus with a bipunctum at the top that I find - exactly the same - in many manuacripts with Ambrosian notation from the first manuscripts XII/beginning XIII century to XIV (on the words: omne, decorans, reis). It is not a climacus praepunctis (in the Ambrosian notation: punctum + clivis + punctum), so is it like a tractulus? Or oriscus? If so, it would be an interesting (and rare) indication of rhytm/expression