Koerber's Illuminated Hybrid Modern (Metrical) Notation

francis

I am creating a devotional booklet for our Confraternity of the Holy Face, and I am continuing to develop the tour de force of making the music beautiful and not just functional, by harkening back to tradition in illuminated manuscripts. I also wanted to create a hybrid that is beautiful that also presents metrical modern notation, and this is where it is headed. I developed my own note shapes that would fit on a four line staff and use moveable DO.

Here are a couple of examples (far from perfected)... these are still in the idea phase.

For those of you who are promoting a metrical form of GC, what is the equivalent of breve, semi-breve in Gregorian Chant notation? I was thinking of experimenting with that also.

Richard Mix

In GABC the forms borrowed from Gregorian chant for long, breve & semi breve are (gv) (g) (G).

francis

Hi Richard

So, which actual neumes represent those durations?

Richard Mix

If I understand what you're up to:

name: ;
user-notes: ;
commentary: ;
annotation: ;
centering-scheme: english;
%fontsize: 12;
%spacing: vichi;
%font: OFLSortsMillGoudy;
%width: 4.5;
%height: 11;
%%
(c4) May(gv) the(h) most(i) (,) ho(j)ly,(iv) most(h) (,) sa(j)cred,(iv) most(H) ad(I)(,)o(J)ra(I)ble,(h)

I see though that the barline kills the hyphen, and there might not be a way to make stemmed minums.

OMagnumMysterium

Francis, here is what I use. The square is long and the diamond is short (breve and semi-breve, if you want to call them that). The rectangle is a double long, and the tiny notes are grace notes, which add no time and come before the beat. The jagged comb-like thing is the qualisma, which indicates a slide or very light grace note between the two notes that it connects.

I've developed this based off of historical notation systems, combined with ideas of what would be most intuitive for someone who has never learned any notation before (whether child or adult). I'm inclined to say that in simple measured music (hymns, and especially the measured chant) measure lines are not completely necessary. The are just one more thing on the page, and often you can "feel" the measure in the music just fine without them. Polyphonic music is a different story though. I'd like to get this notation to work for polyphony etc, but I've mostly just been using it for chant. What's really lacking is a good system of rests, and how to show dotted duration (1.5 length). It just hasn't been a priority yet, but maybe soon.

Here are the examples:

francis

Thank you Richard and OMagnum...

OMag... how are you engraving this?

I will have to try to employ these concepts.

francis

Here is an accompaniment for the Golden Arrow with a couple of other pieces as a medley.

http://www.myopus.com/preview/AdorationOfTheHolyFace.mp4

francis

OMag… can you sing a verse of the Christe Redemptor and perhaps the first line of the Hodie so I can hear the interpretation of your nuances?

francis

New item... hybrid blending modern chant notation with organ accomp... I don't see where this is even practical or desirable.

francis

OMag... it looks like the virga is a dotted quarter note?

francis · Screenshot 2026-03-06 at 12.27.36 PM.png

Using Gregorian Notation based upon suggestions by Richard and OMag, here are two examples. One uses the vowel rule of placing the neume, the other uses a mathematical preference to duration of note, which is how modern notation is rendered.

Personally, I am not sure that bastardizing the chant notation in this way is a 'beautifying' addition. I think the smaller modern note heads which I created for this purpose tend to look better, but I would have to live with them for a while I suppose.

francis

Hmmm... I just realized that the notes in the original version are sitting on the wrong lines and spaces... everything has to go up one line or space... fixing now.

Here is corrected version.

francis

added an image to this one

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