does anybody know about these accidentals?

[Jim DeLaHunt]

On 2024-07-22 23:26, Werner LEMBERG via Unicode wrote:

>>> we wonder about the origin of the following two characters:
>>>
>>>    𝄲 U+1D132 MUSICAL SYMBOL QUARTER TONE SHARP
>>>    𝄳 U+1D133 MUSICAL SYMBOL QUARTER TONE FLAT
>>>
>>> The original proposal to encode them in Unicode is
>>> https://unicode.org/L2/L1998/98045.pdf  – alas, the contained scans
>>> don't cover those two characters, and I don't have access to the cited
>>> books.
>> Well, thanks to the internet I was able to actually check the cited
>> references (Read, Heussenstamm, Rastall, Stone), and *none* of them
>> actually contain these accidentals!
>>
>> Sigh.  Does anybody have an e-mail address of the proposal's author,
>> Perry Roland?  Maybe he can remember...
> Found it – I've CCed him.  Perry, please comment!

In answer to the original question, "does anybody know about these 
accidentals?", I am delighted that I actually know something helpful to 
answer this question.

I follow two leading communities working on music notation. Each of them 
probably has people who know about these accidentals. Each of them has a 
public discussion forum, in which this question could be relayed. There 
may also be other music notation communities with which I am not familiar.

1. the W3C Music Notation Community Group 
<https://www.w3.org/community/music-notation/> 
<https://www.w3.org/community/music-notation/>. It was formed primarily 
to take over maintenance of the MusicXML notation spec, but it also 
maintains the SMuFL (Standard Music Font Layout) specification. Werner 
linked to SMuFL at <https://w3c.github.io/smufl/latest/index.html>. 
SMuFL "provides a standard way of mapping the thousands of musical 
symbols required by conventional music notation into the Private Use 
Area in Unicode’s Basic Multilingual Plane for a single 
(format-independent) font."  Thus the W3C Music Notation Community 
Group's public-music-notation list would be a good place to relay this 
question. The Group's main page has a link to that mailing list.

2. the Music Encoding Initiative <https://music-encoding.org/>. It was 
formed primarily to maintain the MEI notation spec. It has a largely 
academic focus and membership. Perry Roland (cc'd) is one of the 
founders and leading experts of the MEI community, but I understand that 
he is leaving the leadership to others these days. Thus the people in 
this community are good prospects to know about how these symbols are 
actually used in music scores. The MEI group has an email list and Slack 
channel, both described at 
<https://music-encoding.org/community/community-contacts.html>. The 
Slack channel is the more conversational venue. It would also be a good 
place to relay this question.

What specifically would you like to know about these accidentals?  What 
do you "wonder about the origin of" [these two characters]? If you would 
write a message with your questions, I will post that in these two foums.

Best regards,
      —Jim DeLaHunt


-- 
.   --Jim DeLaHunt,jdlh at jdlh.com      http://blog.jdlh.com/  (http://jdlh.com/)
       multilingual websites consultant, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
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