2.8.1 Overview of the supported styles
Three styles are available for typesetting Gregorian chant:
- Editio Vaticana is a complete style for
Gregorian chant, following the appearance of the Solesmes
editions, the official chant books of the Vatican since 1904.
Lilypond has support for all the notational signs used in this
style, including ligatures, custodes, and special signs
such as the quilisma and the oriscus.
- The Editio Medicaea style offers certain features
used in the Medicaea (or Ratisbona) editions which were used prior
to the Solesmes editions. The most significant differences from
the Vaticana style are the clefs, which have
downward-slanted strokes, and the noteheads, which are square and
regular.
- The Hufnagel (“horseshoe nail”) or Gothic
style mimics the writing style in chant manuscripts from Germany
and Central Europe during the middle ages. It is named after the
basic note shape (the virga), which looks like a small
nail.
Three styles emulate the appearance of late-medieval and
renaissance manuscripts and prints of mensural music:
- The Mensural style most closely resembles the
writing style used in late-medieval and early renaissance
manuscripts, with its small and narrow, diamond-shaped noteheads
and its rests which approach a hand-drawn style.
- The Neomensural style is a modernized and
stylized version of the former: the noteheads are broader and the
rests are made up of straight lines. This style is particularly
suited, e.g., for incipits of transcribed pieces of mensural
music.
- The Petrucci style is named after Ottaviano Petrucci
(1466-1539), the first printer to use movable type for music (in
his Harmonice musices odhecaton, 1501). The style uses
larger note heads than the other mensural styles.
Baroque and Classical are not complete styles
but differ from the default style only in some details: certain
noteheads (Baroque) and the quarter rest (Classical).
Only the mensural style has alternatives for all aspects of the
notation. Thus, there are no rests or flags in the Gregorian
styles, since these signs are not used in plainchant notation, and
the Petrucci style has no flags or accidentals of its own.
Each element of the notation can be changed independently of the
others, so that one can use mensural flags, petrucci noteheads,
classical rests and vaticana clefs in the same piece, if one
wishes.
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