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Edited out: note-blackening and mensural notation in 17th-century dance music from Leipzig

2014; Oxford University Press; Volume: 42; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/em/cau035

1741-7260

M. Robertson,

Diverse Musicological Studies

This article deals with the use of note-blackening in dance music by Leipzig composers in the second half of the 17th century. Blackening was part of the system of mensural notation used in the German lands for much of the 16th century. Despite the attempts of Michael Praetorius to clarify the complications of the system, it fell out of use in the early 17th century and Sethus Calvisius, the influential Leipzig-trained theorist, was not alone in disparagingly referring to mensural signs as nothing but ‘clever devices’. However, elements of mensuration remained in use, especially in dance music. While the use of the C3/2 seems to have been little more than a nod to a past tradition, blackening was retained as a practical notation, albeit changed from the Proportio hemiola of Praetorius. A succession of three blackened semibreves became a popular way of marking cross-beat accentuation, particularly at cadences in triple-time dance music. In Leipzig, this seems to have been taken one stage further, when a single blackened semibreve was used to denote single off-beat accents in courantes and sarabandes. Such blackening could lead to a profound change in the characteristics of these dances. Given the importance of this for performance, it is disappointing that blackening is suppressed in many 20th-century editions. Even today, editors are often cavalier with this aspect of the text; at the very least, the modern-day performer should be able to see note-blackening in its proper context.