>> Fret 3 was lettered as ɣ, which was rendered in some contemporary >> engravings >> to look a bit like a fancy r, so some modern transcriptions of the >> tablature >> turn it into an r. If we're going to re-render ɣ, why not do it as c, >> and >> keep the logical letter sequence. > > My preference would be to render it as gamma. Let's do it correctly. > Thanks for pointing this out.
'c' marks fret 2 in French tab. Correct is to think of it as 'c', employ that concept internally, and in any documentation. Draw it as a gamma-like glyph in fonts emulating those hands and fonts which do so historically; but encode it in those fonts as the 'c' it is. This list is the first place I have seen mention of the concept of it being a gamma, the citations i gave in an earlier email are the scholarly references for tablature notation, I own Apel and have it open now, but Wolf is hard to come by outside of a good music library. Apel takes time to discuss the development of some symbols, clefs for instance, but not these, no mention of gamma at all in his discussion of the symbols of french tabulature. He illustrates Granjons pretty font in a 1568 publication, the 'c' in that font is a combination of both, the lower curve of a 'c', the upper flattened arm of a gamma. The hand of gaultier as seen in the Hamburg codex is also shown, there the 'c' (as labeled by Apel) is indeed a gamma, very rectilinear modern 'r'. But, my point here is that Apel labels it 'c', and says nothing about it resembling a gamma. The omission of j will be curious to anyone writing analytical software, but that is enough strangeness (gotta have at least one point of strangeness). Please note that Pierre Attaignant (first printer of french tabulature notation) used ROMAN MAJISCULE letter forms in his 1528 and 1530 editions, C was a C for his readers. I wish I had the material from my survey of french tab printers fonts handy, I am sure there are others whose letter forms were more italianate than courthand. -- Dana Emery _______________________________________________ lilypond-devel mailing list lilypond-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-devel
