Early Baroque Music notation

• Jul 2, 2022 - 17:15

I'm trying to transcribe a piece from tenor gamba by Gibbons. The score, as typical for that time period, has no measure lines, although it's indicated in cut time. I can input the score and "join" the measures, but the score goes off the page. Is there a way to input the notes and have it "wordwrap" when the line is full so that the next notes appear on the next line, and the entire piece is essentially one written measure but wraps to the next line when full?

The score I'm working from has only a finishing barline at the very end. Non of the staffs have any barlines.

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• Jul 2, 2022 - 17:36

There us no automation but you can split the single measure where convenient as described here https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/measure-operations#split-measure. Also note that barlines can be made invisible quite simply. Right click on one and select similar, then use keyboard shortcut V.

It may be easiest to retain a 4/4 time signature until the notes are entered and then make the barlines invisible. It gets more complicated if the notes need to cross invisible barlines. Then this feature https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/early-music-features#unbarred-notat… could be useful.

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• Jul 3, 2022 - 20:27

Musescore does this very easily. Go to the start of the Handbook and skip down to “Advanced topics - Early Music - Unmeasured notation.” I sometimes include mensurstrichs (sorry, Jo-Jo!) if only to keep myself right when transcribing, but you can always make them invisible later if you want. In spite of the warnings about these features being experimental I have never had any problems with them.

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