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Custodes

A custos (plural: custodes; latin word for `guard') is a staff context symbol that appears at the end of a staff line. It anticipates the pitch of the first note(s) of the following line and thus helps the player or singer to manage line breaks during performance, thus enhancing readability of a score.

     \score {
       \notes { c'1 \break
             \property Staff.Custos \set #'style = #'mensural
             d' }
       \paper {
         \translator {
           \StaffContext
           \consists Custos_engraver
         }
       }
     }
     

[picture of music]

Custodes were frequently used in music notation until the 17th century. There were different appearances for different notation styles. Nowadays, they have survived only in special forms of musical notation such as via the editio vaticana dating back to the beginning of the 20th century.

For typesetting custodes, just put a Custos_engraver into the Staff context when declaring the \paper block. In this block, you can also globally control the appearance of the custos symbol by setting the custos style property. Currently supported styles are vaticana, medicaea, hufnagel and mensural.

     \paper {
       \translator {
           \StaffContext
           \consists Custos_engraver
           Custos \override #'style = #'mensural
       }
     }
     

The property can also be set locally, for example in a \notes block:

     \notes {
       \property Staff.Custos \override #'style = #'vaticana
       c'1 d' e' d' \break c' d' e' d'
     }
     
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Copyright (c) 1997--2002 Han-Wen Nienhuys and Jan Nieuwenhuizen.

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.


This page was built from LilyPond-1.7.14 (development-branch) by

Buchan Milne <(address unknown)>, Thu Mar 6 21:11:35 2003 CET.