Une bibliothèque informatique pour la notation musicale baroque

Abstract

This paper describes the design and implementation of a musical score editor adapted to the notation of the Baroque. We begin with an examination of contemporary scores, and show that their appearance follows from obsolete typographical conventions. We then examine manuscripts of the Baroque era, in order to recover their original symbols and their calligraphy, and we discover problems similar to those posed by the use of the serif. The main part of the paper examines the grouping of notes, a problem which cannot be solved by means of a static font. We examine various solutions based on direct numeric techniques, and find them unsatisfactory. The solution we propose consists in the automated management of a family of stretchable curves, obtained by reverse engineering on the output of the digitizer program. We specialcase the handling of multiple ties. We conclude with recommendations to the users of this software.