smufl icon indicating copy to clipboard operation
smufl copied to clipboard

Changes to names for hard and soft flats in 'Medieval and Renaissance accidentals' range

Open dspreadbury opened this issue 3 years ago • 2 comments

Says Freeman Gilmore:

I have a question about, U+E9E1 it is called a 'Flat,hard B (mi)' At one time only one flat note, it was a Bb.

The gamut was:

[Gamma uppercase] A B C D E F G a b [square b] c d e f g aa bb [square bb] cc.dd ee.

b was Bb, called soft B, and also fa, (U+E9E0)  And it was also sometimes used as an accidental on the staft to make it clear that the B note was Bb.    (the written note B in German.)

Square b was B, called hard B, and also fa, (U+E9Ei)  And it was also sometimes used as an accidental on the staft to make it clear that the B note was B.   Should be called 'Hard B (mi)', is  not a Flat hard B (mi),   (the written note H in German, because they thought the square B looked like the lowercase gothic H).

dspreadbury avatar Oct 25 '22 08:10 dspreadbury

What do you make of this, @mscuthbert? Do you agree we should change the glyph descriptions of these glyphs to be "Hard B" and "Soft B" rather than specifically including "flat" in their names?

dspreadbury avatar Oct 25 '22 08:10 dspreadbury

That's probably correct. Maybe they should be "Hard (Square) B" and "Soft (Flat) B"?

I wouldn't include the "mi" and "fa" designations even though they're correct, they'll just confuse people further.

mscuthbert avatar Oct 26 '22 01:10 mscuthbert