I'm transcribing St. Gall neumes for the Neumz project using the 2011 Graduale Novum and comparing with PDFs of the ancient manuscripts for neume height. How important is the vertical position of the St. Gall neumes?
Somewhat. Particularly in their immediate context related to the neumes before and after. Things tend to reset somewhat at syntactic breaks or between words even, just because of concerns of space. If in doubt, look at the square notes and see if you think there’s a reflection of pitch information in the spacing, whether that’s showing something that’s a little higher or lower, or different than might be expected. Maybe refer back to Cardine’s section on pitch related symbols (I think the ‘e’ if the major one). Or send it my way and I’ll take a look.
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