Incipit field too short? Or directionals unneeded?

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Sat, 10/20/2012 - 12:14 — Haruo

I am not much of a musician. But I try to do what I can. The Incipit field only appears to accept 20 characters. I have been trying to enter Incipits to distinguish/describe tunes for which I lack scans. Sometimes tunes share an initial phrase, so that if only that initial phrase is given in the incipit, they may appear to be the same (or near variants of the same) tune. According to the instructions, an Incipit should apparently include U's and D's to indicate whether the transition from one note to the next is upwards or downwards. Unfortunately, including U's and D's can make it impossible to get to the part of the incipit that illustrates the non-identity of two tunes.

So my question is, in such cases is it better to include or to leave out the U's and D's?

The case that caused me to think of writing this query was two tunes by Alexander Robert Reinagle, both of which occur (thus far) only in EHT1880: LEIGH and CHRISTI GRATIA. Their inital phrases are
33D21U6D543
and
3D21U6D5443
respectively. Based on those data it would be easy to assume that they are the same tune, with prosodic motives in the text underlying the minor difference. And it's not possible to transcribe through to the end of the next phrase without either leaving out the directionals or running up against the 20-character field limit.

Any chance the field could be expanded to accommodate the rare but real cases where more is needed?

I have noticed that most of the incipits I see in the database don't have the directional letters, and for a little while I was following suit, but on rereading the instructions I saw them and decided they were too useful to pass up.


Comments

Sat, 10/20/2012 - 22:58 — Haruo

I've wondered why we put so much emphasis on key signatures, when a tune can be transposed out of its original key without affecting anything but the pitch (or at least so it seems to me, the non-musician-to-speak-of); i.e. it doesn't to my untutored ear affect much except, if too high or too low, its singability (comfort range), which is usually the reason for transposing it in the first place, yet we don't pay any attention to time signature, which can easily affect the whole feel of the piece. I'm thinking in particular of the two instances of DIVINUM MYSTERIUM in The Christian Life Hymnal, 2006 (CLH2006), #80 and #86 I think (I'll post scans later, hopefully today), one of which is in triple and the other in duple time. It seems to me that this would be more useful information on a particular instance record than whether it's in C Major or Bb Major. But as I've said, I'm not a musician (and my main accompanist died in July), so there may be an aspect to this whole issue that I don't understand.

[[editing later in the evening]]
Okay, here are the scans: CLH #80 and CLH #86, triple and duple meter respectively.

Sat, 10/20/2012 - 13:18 — Haruo

On a side note, why does the Incipit field post everything in blocks of 5? I feel a space should come between phrases, not after every fifth character.

Mon, 10/22/2012 - 09:06 — dianneshapiro

The U's and D's are to indicate when the tune goes up or down into the next octave, rather than when the tune does up and down. They are useful to include, but time consuming. Incipits typically include the first 15 significant notes, but if you need to distinguish two tunes you may use more space and eliminate the U's and D's.

Mon, 10/22/2012 - 10:48 — Haruo

I will try to remove the many extraneous U's and D's that I have introduced this past weekend, which have doubtless already surprised many parishioners! ;-) Octaves, eh? Do both 1's count as being in the same octave, or does a jump from B to the immediately adjacent C in C Major call for a U?

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