Cantus Firmus

Cantus Firmus is a publishing house that provides scholarly editions of Dutch music from the Renaissance (c 1420-1650). Printed editions currently include works by Joannes Tollius (Amersfoort c 1550-Copenhagen c 1620), Petit Jan de Latre (Liège c 1510-Utrecht 1569) and Cornelis Padbrué (Haarlem c 1592-1670). In addition, books are available on Sweelinck (Deventer 1561/62-Amsterdam 1621) and Tollius. There are digital editions of many composers, and this is no longer limited to music of Dutch origin (although these works are often transcribed from Dutch sources of the time).

The scholarly quality of the editions is anchored in the preface and verifiability of the transcriptions. The preface comes about based on scientific research, referring to relevant scholarly literature; the transcriptions are arranged in such a way that users specialising in the music of this period can effortlessly reconstruct the original notation, so that the publisher’s choices do not necessarily lead to one and the same interpretation of the source. At the same time, the publisher’s choices give the interested layman sufficient guidance to be able to arrive at a good and historically sound performance.

- The full text is always placed in its poetic form above the music in question.

- In the transcriptions, the text is placed under the notes as carefully as possible, based on the source. In the case of text repetition indicated by signs, its elaboration is italicised. Additions are placed in square brackets. In some cases, in addition to the text placement that matches the situation in the source, an alternative is given in square brackets on the second line.

- Where in the source the music notation is broken off to the next line, in the transcription a vertical dash is given on the top line of the bar. If there is a change to a new page, there is a double dash.

- An asterisk in the musical notation or near the text to be sung refers to the critical notes; in the digital editions these are at the bottom of the relevant page, in the printed editions they are collected in the preface.

- Accidentals that appear in the source are placed in the transcription before the relevant note; accidentals that are missing in the source, but should be added according to the practice of the time, are written above the relevant note; accidentals that are missing in the source and about which there is no certainty whether they should be added are placed in round brackets above the notes.

- Ligatures (compositions of two or more notes in one symbol) are indicated in the transcription by a closed bracket () above the relevant notes.

- Passages in 'black notation' (causing the notes to lose a third of their value) are given an open bracket ()

above the relevant passage in the transcription.

- In the source, the music is notated without bars; in the transcription, a bar is placed between the staves every two semibreves. These bar lines do not run through the staves and notes that continue after the bar lines are not split into their respective parts, even if the line is broken off. In some cases, the bar line is placed not after two but after three semibreves, with the aim of making the final cadence coincide with a bar line. The musical value of such an intervention is of no significance and is therefore not indicated in the transcription.

- In this type of transcription, accidentals apply as in the musical notation of the time: an accidental applies only to the note it immediately precedes and to direct repetitions of it. Another note, a rest or sometimes even a comma in the text is enough to cancel the accidental. So, bar lines play no role at all in the duration of the accidentals.