Gabriel wrote:And St Meinrad font used in Adobe InDesign
Regina.jpg
I do like that - it could almost be from the pages of Plainsong for Schools. How fiddly and time-consuming is it to work this way? I know InDesign very well and wouldn't mind trying.
Paul's example is very neat, but I think the overall appearance of it is rather 'thin'.
Hm! Someone else was doing something similar in an earlier thread! The programme, Musicus, is Sibelius - as mentioned right above the extract. Have you been allowing the honey to ferment into mead?
musicus wrote:How fiddly and time-consuming is it to work this way? I know InDesign very well and wouldn't mind trying.
Well, it takes longer than ordinary setting in Finale, partly because as Paul mentioned you have to do the spacing yourself and also I need the font chart in front of me to remember the obscurer squiggles - there is a logic to the layout which you do get used to in much the same way as you get used to keyboard entry in notation programs. But I have worked out a method for myself which could be summarised as:
Set up styles in InDesign for chant & text, and also for 1st line of both if desired.
Type a line of text, making initial provision for hyphenation and extra space needed for melismas (I tend to use 'M spaces' etc. for wider gaps)
Enter music, at this stage I use a the same spacing between notes or groups of notes. St Meinrad offers about 5 different short lengths of space which thinking about it relate in size to 'M spaces' etc. - I use the equivalent of an 'N space' for this initial typing.
Adjust text - usually I find that there are too many words I have tried to squeeze in on one line
Adjust spacing - I sometimes turn the grid on for this to see how words and music line up.
Finishing tweaks and move on to next line
My guess is that setting the Regina Caeli took about 30-40mins Apologies to those for whom most of this was gobbledegook!
But I'm often struck by the complexity of any notation but also how much more it conveys than simple text.
Southern Comfort wrote:That's not the original text by a very long way
It is from the Worcester Antiphoner... and the texts at Durham are quoted as having the invocations for the queen and archbishop reversed in order... so, I beg to differ with your supposition about it not being the original text.
Southern Comfort wrote:Also, the 'pointing'...
You don't like it, Dom Bévenot would not have liked it and it is not the "official SSG version". Well spotted. In my defence, I merely transcribed that which I was given and sang at Worcester Cathedral some years ago; I kindly suggest that should you like to argue this further, that you take it up with the authorities there.
Gabriel wrote:And St Meinrad font used in Adobe InDesign
Regina.jpg
If anyone's interested, you can buy the St Meinrad fonts online at http://stores.lulu.com/saintmeinradmusic If you follow the link to the appropriate font (Windows or Mac) and select Preview on the following page, you get a PDF of the complete documentation. Pretty complex it is, too, albeit fairly logical.
Has anyone tried the Caeciliae software? It employs some of the more obscure features of OpenType fonts to build up neums as ligatures, but it only works on text processing software that is equipped to do this. Microsoft Word isn't, Adobe InDesign is.
Some of the existing fonts and software miss out on the extended neum set now used by Solesmes, including various forms of oriscus and semi-liquescent neums.
Southern Comfort wrote:That's not the original text by a very long way
It is from the Worcester Antiphoner... and the texts at Durham are quoted as having the invocations for the queen and archbishop reversed in order... so, I beg to differ with your supposition about it not being the original text.
Southern Comfort wrote:Also, the 'pointing'...
You don't like it, Dom Bévenot would not have liked it and it is not the "official SSG version". Well spotted. In my defence, I merely transcribed that which I was given and sang at Worcester Cathedral some years ago; I kindly suggest that should you like to argue this further, that you take it up with the authorities there.
Nothing to calm down about. I had a good portion of my tongue firmly in cheek ─ shame there's no emoticon for precisely that. My more serious point about the Queen of the English was that during the period when this collection was put together, there were no queens of England, only kings. It seems unlikely that anyone would have sung laudes regiæ, which by definition are kingly acclamations, for a queen at this epoch, especially without lauding the king first. I will investigate further.
Back on topic, I find Meinrad absolutely fine to use (I tend to do so in Word ─ quick and dirty), but it doesn't seem to display correctly at the point size Dom Harry Hagan mentions in the manual. I've also found that blocking everything and making it bold gives a less elegant but more legible result.
John Ainslie wrote:Has anyone tried the Caeciliae software? It employs some of the more obscure features of OpenType fonts to build up neums as ligatures, but it only works on text processing software that is equipped to do this. Microsoft Word isn't, Adobe InDesign is.
Thank you, John. The examples look quite beautiful - I am no chant expert, so I don't know if they are 100% accurate - and the font is free. What's not to like? I shall try this.
