The rest of the vertical lines in Barnard MS 1 are placed in the middle of chants and serve a range of purposes. In any section of chant, there may be vertical lines that serve no obvious structural purpose.
Looking at any section of chant, like this excerpt, there are many vertical lines that serve little structural purpose. On this page, the lines after “mea” and “fa” (short for “facite”) in the second stanza show the end of two chants. But the others, after “ro” (the last syllable of “ero”), “tabescat,” and “anima,” do not mark significant formal moments. Instead, these either denote a breath or exist merely to clarify the relationship between text and notation.
Textual Clarification
Generally, before 1500, scribes would copy the text first before adding the musical notation, regularly leading to uneven correlations between the two. In these cases, especially when some words came conspicuously close to the next neume, vertical lines helped clarify which pitches should be sung with which words and syllables.
As in other manuscripts of the period, in Barnard MS 1 the text was written before the notation. Vertical lines were added in the middle of the process (the vertical line has been drawn over in the red ink of the decorated initial). Clearly, vertical lines were primarily added after the notation and words, but before illuminations and other decorations.
It can often be difficult to differentiate between lines added for textual clarity and those used as breath marks. However, in some cases, the different functions of vertical lines are clearly distinguished. Vertical lines often appear after every single word in a chant, negating their usefulness as breath marks and making pauses unlikely. Additionally, some lines, like the line in the middle of “hora,” denote which pitches should be sung with each syllable. Lines inside a single word would be extremely unlikely locations for breaths or phrasing marks.
Occasionally, vertical lines are placed within a single word–there are four alone within “Comedetis!” With a fifth vertical line immediately following the word, these too are clearly not breath marks.
Breaths and Phrasing
In all other cases, vertical lines serve as a performance mark, either denoting the end of a phrase or functioning as a breath mark.
In this line of chant, a vertical line appears at the end of the word “maledixerunt.” The last associated with this word is far enough away from the first pitch of the subsequent word, “vobis,” (abbreviated here as “vob”) that a vertical line would not be needed to demonstrate the text underlay. Occurring as it does in the middle of the chant, the line does not designate a change of performer. This line–and many others throughout the manuscript–simply marks a breath or end of a phrase.
A hint at the relationship between vertical lines and phrasing comes from composer and theorist Gioseffo Zarlino, writing in 1558. He notes that “church musicians write rests in their chants not for ornament but out of need, because it is impossible to sing their chants straight through without resting. So they devised signs to place at points where the performers were to breathe… It is true that these pauses were not written in the manner of the rests described previously, for they were so written as to cross all the lines of the staff, at times singly and at times doubled” (125). Even though Zarlino wrote two centuries after Barnard MS 1 was copied, he consciously followed older models and, perhaps more importantly, studied with and became a Franciscan. Notably, his observation that breath marks were “at times singly and at times doubled” implies that even double lines had the potential to act as breath marks, potentially notating phrases as well as performance changes. There is, however, no indication that the double lines in Barnard MS 1 function as breath marks.
Zarlino, Gioseffo. The Art of Counterpoint: Part Three of Le Istitutioni Harmoniche, 1558. Translated by Guy A. Marco and Claude V. Palisca. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1968.
