7.7.6 Ancient time signatures

There is limited support for mensural time signatures. The glyphs are hard-wired to particular time fractions. In other words, to get a particular mensural signature glyph with the \time n/m command, n and m have to be chosen according to the following table

Use the style property of grob TimeSignature to select ancient time signatures. Supported styles are neomensural and mensural. The above table uses the neomensural style. This style is appropriate for the incipit of transcriptions of mensural pieces. The mensural style mimics the look of historical printings of the 16th century.

The following examples show the differences in style,

See also

This manual: Time signature gives a general introduction to the use of time signatures.

Bugs

Ratios of note durations do not change with the time signature. For example, the ratio of 1 brevis = 3 semibrevis (tempus perfectum) must be made by hand, by setting

breveTP = #(ly:make-duration -1 0 3 2)
...
{ c\breveTP f1 }

This sets breveTP to 3/2 times 2 = 3 times a whole note.

The old6/8alt symbol (an alternate symbol for 6/8) is not addressable with \time. Use a \markup instead