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Ligatures

In musical terminology, a ligature is a coherent graphical symbol that represents at least two distinct notes. Ligatures originally appeared in the manuscripts of Gregorian chant notation roughly since the 9th century as an allusion to the accent symbols of greek lyric poetry to denote ascending or descending sequences of notes. Both, the shape and the exact meaning of ligatures changed tremendously during the following centuries: In early notation, ligatures were used for monophonic tunes (Gregorian chant) and very soon denoted also the way of performance in the sense of articulation. With upcoming multiphony, the need for a metric system arised, since multiple voices of a piece have to be synchronized some way. New notation systems were invented that used the manifold shapes of ligatures to now denote rhythmical patterns (e.g. black mensural notation, mannered notation, ars nova). With the invention of the metric system of the white mensural notation, the need for ligatures to denote such patterns disappeared. Nevertheless, ligatures were still in use in the mensural system for a couple of decades until they finally disappeared during the late 16th / early 17th century. Still, ligatures have survived in contemporary editions of Gregorian chant such as the Editio Vaticana from 1905/08.

Syntax

Syntactically, ligatures are simply enclosed by \[ and \]. Some ligature styles (such as Editio Vaticana) may need additional input syntax specific for this particular type of ligature. By default, the LigatureBracket engraver just puts a square bracket above the ligature:

     \score {
         \notes \transpose c c' {
             \[ g c a f d' \]
             a g f
             \[ e f a g \]
         }
     }
     

[picture of music]

To select a specific style of ligatures, a proper ligature engraver has to be added to the Voice context, as explained in the following subsections. Only white mensural ligatures are supported with certain limitations. Support for Editio Vaticana will be added in the future.


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