Changing Musical Time in the Renaissance and Today

The concepts of time, rhythm, and musical notation have changed dramatically from the Middle Ages to the Present. Music has slowed dramatically over the past millennium, and composers have repeatedly taken advantage of new resources. This pre-print of a short paper in honor of Joseph Connors documents this change and shows how it can affect how we think of nearly every piece written from 1100 to today. It concludes with an in-depth discussion of a piece from a particularly important moment in the history of notation, the lauda, O Regina from the manuscript Siena, Archivio di Stato, Fondo Vicariato di Gavorrano (1568-69), Ravi 3, giving the first transcription of this work with its unique notation. (.pdf 600k)