Custos (music)
Mensural notation is the musical notation system used for European vocal polyphony, 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. Mensural notation was employed principally for compositions in the tradition of vocal polyphony, whereas plainchant retained its own, older system of neumes, neume notation throughout the period. Besides these, some purely instrumental music could be written in various forms of instrument-specific tablature notation. Mensural notation grew o ...
[...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]