Re: Breve with double lines on each side

[Alexander Kobel]

Reinhold Kainhofer wrote:
> A while ago we had that discussion about a user wanting two vertical lines on 
> each side of the breve instead of one. I have now prepared a patch for our 
> font, which adds such a "noteheads.sM1double" glyph:

Woah, great! Praise you! :-)

> Regarding the single- vs. double-line breve: I have not yet found a reference 
> to the single-line breve. Only the double-lined breve can be found practically 
> everywhere:

I know the double-line shape very well, but I've seen the single-line 
version, too, in some transscriptions of Gregorian-inspired choral 
works, e.g. Samuel Barber's "Agnus Dei", edition by G. Schirmer, 1967, 
and several others.

But the single-line version is especially often encountered in 
"Psalmtönen", i.e. the semi-modern transscriptions of short Gregorian 
melodys, e.g. in the "Gotteslob", the German Catholic church choral 
books. In this context, it is used to denote the main note (tenor) of 
the melody, which is to be repeated arbitrarily often depending on the 
number of syllables in the verse.
(See e.g. 
http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.12/input/lsr/lilypond-snippets/Rhythms#chant-or-psalms-notation.ly)

And, while you're at it: there is also a solid node head (quarter note 
head?) with single vertical lines, which basically means the same, but 
is only used for notes at the end of a line, not to be repeated too 
often, to adapt the melody to the stresses of the lyrics (finalis or 
flexa or something like that, IIRC).
I'd greatly appreciate a method to enter these without fancy scheme 
tweaks! ;-)

> One thing I notice is that the vertical lines are usually a bit larger than 
> the notehead. This would also change the default breve glyph, so I haven't 
> included that in the patch. What do you think about this issue?

In the mentioned "Gotteslob", the single-line version (both the brevis 
and the one with the solid note head) are larger than the note head - as 
a rough guess, they extend about 1/4 to 1/3 staff space above and below.
And, by the way, the lines are horizontally tight on the note head, not 
like the brevis in e.g. 
http://imslp.org/wiki/Mass_for_Five_Voices_(Byrd,_William)
If you want me to, I can make some scans tomorrow.

The same holds for some instances of the double-line variant I've 
checked in my songbooks; although I think the shape in the scores of 
Byrd's mass (with horizontal space between note head and lines) looks 
more elegant, the tight version seems to be more common.


Cheers,
Alexander