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Mensural note heads

For ancient notation, a note head style other than the default style may be chosen. This is accomplished by setting the style property of the NoteHead object to baroque, neomensural, mensural, petrucci, blackpetrucci or semipetrucci.

The baroque style differs from the default style by:

• Providing a maxima note head, and
• Using a square shape for \breve note heads.

The neomensural, mensural, and petrucci styles differ from the baroque style by:

• Using rhomboidal heads for semibreves and all smaller durations, and
• Centering the stems on the note heads.

The blackpetrucci style produces note heads usable in black mensural notation or coloratio sections in white mensural notation. Because note head style does not influence flag count, in this style a semiminima should be notated as a8*2, not a4, otherwise it will look like a minima. The multiplier can be different if coloratio is used, e.g., to notate triplets.

Use semipetrucci style to draw half-colored note heads (breves, longas and maximas).

The following example demonstrates the petrucci style:

\compressEmptyMeasures
\autoBeamOff
\override NoteHead.style = #'petrucci
a'\maxima a'\longa a'\breve a'1 a'2 a'4 a'8 a'16 a'
\override NoteHead.style = #'semipetrucci
a'\breve*5/6
\override NoteHead.style = #'blackpetrucci
a'8*4/3 a'
\override NoteHead.style = #'petrucci
a'\longa

Note head styles gives an overview of all available note head styles.

See also

Music Glossary: mensural notation, note head.

Notation Reference: Note head styles.