On 1/3/01, chip mcgahan wrote:

>hi --
>
>mensurstrich is the system developed, i think betw/ the wars, as a means of avoiding the so-called "tyranny of the bar line." in the renaissance, to accomodate teh rhythmic flexibility, in modern editions, editors wanted not to be tied down to 3/2, or 4/1, or what have you. even 2/2 - 2/2 - 3/2 - 6/2 - 2/2, for example was regarded as too stultifying. so someone came up w/ a system whereby the "barlines" were placed as dotted lines between the staves, not intruding on or into them. there were no alternating meter sigs in mensurstrich, so the one at the head of the piece stood, but the varied location of the mensurstrichen dictated the nature of the pulse and accents and effectively gave sequential mixed meters. it is a simple but effective device for preserving, for barline-fixated singers, something of the flexibility of the renaissance rhythms.

OK, you could do this in Finale, by using custom staves and barlines
and hiding time signatures. The first two are a matter of setting
it up correctly. (I know it can be done, though I've never done it.)
The third is work, but it's doable.

How many songs would you need this for? If it's a lot, a good notation
program may be what you need. But if it's only one or two songs, the
trick might be to set up a monster time signature (say 64/4) and just
touch up the result with a graphics program.

>encore is able to change meters from measure to measure w/ ease. what it cannot do is have one line chugging along in 2/4, the line below in 3/4, the line below in 6/8, and so forth. this of course limits one's ability to write simultaneous, as opposed to sequential mixed meters. and since in encore it is also difficult to draw horizontal brackets, which could denote sub-metric groupings w/in an unchanging meter, it is just too frustrating to try to do this w/ encore.

Again, you can do any sort of barline fiddling you like in Finale. It's
painful. (*Everything* in Finale is painful, including the copy protection
scheme.) But it can be done.

>so, encore can do sequential mixed meters, as long as they are universal. it cannot do mensurstrich, period. nor can it do senza misura passages unless they fit within its arbitrary limits. this makes chant notation difficult.

"Chant notation." Is that Plainsong notation? Finale can do that, though,
again, I've never done it.
--
Bob Waltz
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"The one thing we learn from history --
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