What is "mensural notation"

Mensural notation is the musical notation system used for European vocal polyphonic music from the later part of the 13th century until about 1600. The term "mensural" refers to the ability of this system to describe precisely measured rhythmic durations in terms of numerical proportions between note values. Its modern name is inspired by the terminology of medieval theorists, who used terms like musica mensurata ("measured music") or cantus mensurabilis ("measurable song") to refer to the rhythmically defined polyphonic music of their age, as opposed to musica plana or musica choralis, i.e., Gregorian plainchant. With mensural notation being employed principally for compositions in the tradition of vocal polyphony, plainchant retained its own, older system of neume notation throughout the period, while some purely instrumental music could be written in various forms of instrument-specific tablature notation.

Mensural notation grew out of an earlier, more limited method of notating rhythms in terms of fixed repetitive patterns, the so-called rhythmic modes, which were developed in France around 1200. An early form of mensural notation was first described and codified in the treatise Ars cantus mensurabilis ("The art of measured chant") by Franco of Cologne . A much expanded system allowing for greater rhythmic complexity was introduced in France with the stylistic movement of the Ars nova in the 14th century, while Italian 14th-century music developed its own, somewhat different variant. Around 1400, the French system was adopted across Europe, and became the standard form of notation of the Renaissance music of the 15th and 16th centuries. After around 1600, mensural notation gradually evolved into modern measure (or bar) notation.

The decisive innovation of mensural notation was the systematic use of different note shapes to denote rhythmic durations that stood in well-defined, hierarchical numerical relations to each other. Mensural notation differed from the modern system in that the values of each note were more strongly context-dependent. In particular, a note could have the length of either two or three units of the next smaller order, whereas in modern notation these relations are invariably binary. Whether a note was to be read as ternary ("perfect") or binary ("imperfect") was a matter partly of context rules and partly of a system of mensuration signs comparable to modern time signatures. There was also a complex system of temporarily shifting note values by proportion factors like 2:1 or 3:2. Mensural notation used no bar lines, and it sometimes employed special connected note forms (ligatures) inherited from earlier medieval notation. Unlike in the earliest beginnings of the writing of polyphonic music, and unlike in modern practice, mensural notation was usually not written in a score arrangement but in individual parts.

Mensural notation was extensively described and codified by contemporary theorists. As these writings, like all academic work of the time, were usually in Latin, many features of the system are still conventionally referred to by their Latin terms.

Note values

Name

13th

Maxima

Longa

Breve

Semibreve

Minim

Semiminim

Fusa

Semifusa

Rests

Value

Mensural

Modern

Mx

or

L

or

B

Mensural brevis rest.svg

Rests on stave 03 Breve.svg

Sb

Mensural semibrevis rest.svg

Rests on stave 04 Semibreve.svg

Mn

Mensural minim rest.svg

Rests on stave 05 Minim.svg

Sm

Mensural semiminim rest.svg

Rests on stave 06 Crotchet.svg

F

Mensural fusa rest.svg

Rests on stave 07 Quaver.svg

Sf

Mensural semifusa rest.svg

Rests on stave 08 Semiquaver.svg