Incomplete And Utter History Of Classical Music

FRANCO IN GENERAL

O

ther luminaries giving off the dying light of the ars antiqua were chaps like Franco de Cologne/ Franco de Cologne - I know, unfortunate, isn't it, but at least he resisted the urge to spell it Franceau - was the guy generally credited with sorting out how long notes lasted. Sounds odd to say that now, I guess, but back then -well, someone had to get it all together. Just like Gregory the Gorgeous had sorted out plainchant, so Franco got to grips with notes and how you wrote down how long each note lasted. He set his stall out in a little book called De musica mensurabilis or, if you like, 'Of Music and Measures', which sounds a little like a lost manuscript by John Steinbeck.

Up until now, there had been no agreed system for showing how long a note lasted. He it was who standardized the 'breve' as the unit of musical measure. A semibreve is this? and is four beats long. This? is a minim, and lasts two.

And so on, down through to? the crochet (one beat) and the cute but ridiculously named hemi-demi-semiquaver I, the sort of Tinkerbell of notes: you have to believe that it exists or it won't. fi??? know, it seems to me that being around back then meant you could pick your name rather like newly ennobled lords pick their provenance today. So, today, you have Lady 'Ihatrhcr of Kesteven and Lord Wilson ofRievaulx or whatever, back then you had more or less the same, but you didn't have to wait to get into the Upper Chamber to do it. Everybody was at it. Personally, I think I 'd go for Fry of Soho. Maybe even… Fry of the Route of the 77 Bus -give me a bit of leeway.