Gospel canticle solemn tones in Gregorio
  • GerardH
    Posts: 461
    Forum members may find my latest noodlings on gregorio of interest. I am attempting to typeset the solemn tones of the Benedictus as they are laid out in the Solesmes books. For reference, here is a page from the AR2 with the Magnificat in the 1st and 6th tones. The AR1 has the Benedictus similarly laid out, but without the vertical lines.

    It is possible to typeset multiple lines of text to one line of chant in gregorio, as demonstrated marvellously by Benjamin Bloomfield's transcription tool. Doing so with an irregular text is not easy, but quite possible. I have successfully encoded the Benedictus (first half of each line only) for the 1st and 6th tones. The code is not straightforward, but here it is in a text file.

    Next attachment is a direct pdf output from the Source & Summit editor. The appearance of the vowel-centred alignment is not particularly pleasing.

    Instead I downloaded an svg file, which I could then open in Inkscape. I added the vertical lines, realigned the syllables and increased both horizontal and vertical spacing until I was happy with the appearance. Here is the "finished" result.

    My reason for all this is that I hope to eventually have a complete set of the beginnings and endings of the Benedictus, so that they can appear on facing pages in a folder, and be changed out with ease to match the antiphon of the day. Obviously the endings are a much larger task, but it should become a case of just changing a few notes in a file, rather than starting from scratch every time.

    Some rambling notes:
    • I had trouble adding the custos in. It would usually be as simple as typing (h+), but that wouldn't display correctly on Mr Bloomfield's site, and it would cause the Source & Summit site to crash completely. I suspect it has something to do with using the pole character - "|" - for the multiple text lines, but it may be something else.
    • I didn't have EB Garamond, my selected font from S&S, installed on my system, so had to manually change the fonts to Garamond in Inkscape. I've just installed the EB Garamond font family, so that probably won't be an issue in the future.
    • The AR1 has the Benedictus punctuated at least three different ways in the same book, even two on the same page! I picked one and stuck with it.
    Magnificat-1-6--AR2.pdf
    296K
    Benedictus-start-1-6.txt
    888B
    SourceandSummit-output.pdf
    18K
    Benedictus-start-1-6.pdf
    35K
    Thanked by 1tomjaw
  • GerardH
    Posts: 461
    Just noticed I used a previous version of my code with an error in the third line. Amended code and S&S output attached.
    Benedictus-start-1-6.txt
    888B
    SourceandSummit-output.pdf
    18K
    Thanked by 1tomjaw
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,216
    FWIW, I don't think the new S&S editor is actually using Gregorio software; it's doing its own thing now. Standard Gregorio allows only for one line of "translation" text below the chant text, and it's hard to make syllables line up well.

    The sample image below was produced at my Gregorio site, which runs version 5.2.1 of the software, not the very latest, but close to it.
    image
    Screenshot_20210927_035508.png
    177 x 141 - 4K
    Thanked by 1GerardH
  • GerardH
    Posts: 461
    Thanks for the correction. I'm a bit hazy on the distinction between Gregorio, gabc, GregorioTeX and all related paraphenalia. I've given up on trying to run it locally, relying on online tools like those mentioned in the OP
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,216
    To accomplish your goal, it might actually be easier to use the Meinrad fonts in a Word document.
  • GerardH
    Posts: 461
    To accomplish your goal, it might actually be easier to use the Meinrad fonts in a Word document.

    Te rogamus, Domine.
  • PaxTecum
    Posts: 314
    Meinrad fonts FTW. They are the best way to get the vowels lined up properly under the neums. I prefer to use Adobe InDesign as I find it much easier to manipulate documents.
Add a Comment