Valerio: a 16th-century Music Font

Dorico
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Of course, the SMuFL standard does have categories for all the Renaissance and Medieval notation symbols; but if you actually want to use them in Dorico, you’d have to replace every “normal” symbol that you use, in the Music Symbols editor; and in the Tonality Editor (in the case of accidentals); and in the Notehead Set editor (which doesn’t consider Renaissance & Medieval noteheads to be “noteheads” that you can add to sets). And you’d still have to sort out things like stem positions, flags, etc…

So, here’s a music font that uses Renaissance-style symbols in the standard glyph slots, so that you can just switch fonts and be done.

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Naturally, the Renaissance symbol SMuFL area is also populated with all the additional symbols that you might need.

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Incidentally, in the process of making this, I came across a nice “workaround” for adding ficta, using Figured Bass accidentals above the note!

As ever, it’s a work in progress, so let me know any problems or things you want.

It’s called Valerio. (See what I did there?)

Valerio.zip (48.7 KB)

28 Likes
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I get picked on by colleagues from time to time when in my choral music I emulate a medieval or renaissance style in their eyes. Usually, it’s because these works are in a modal, pan-diatonic (pan-modal) style. This will now give me a chance to really to get back at them when they say that! Thanks, Ben.

Tim

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:wink:

valerio
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It’s raining cool fonts this week!
image

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This is awesome! I was just thinking about tackling this yesterday, but I’m glad you did instead!

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Perfect name! :slight_smile:
And thank you for sharing the Font!

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Awesome! And in case anybody is wondering how to install the font so it’s usable in Dorico:

  • Close Dorico.
  • Create a folder named Valerio in C:\Program Files\Common Files\SMuFL\Fonts (if you’re on Windows) or in /Library/Application Support/SMuFL/Fonts (if you’re on Mac) and place the file Valerio.json there.
  • Install the font (Valerio.otf) as you would any other font. A double-click should usually do it.
  • Restart Dorico.
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Great work, as usual, Ben!

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Thank you very much, Ben, for this contribution to Renaissance Music.

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Yes, great, thank-you. Here is a complementary Feature Request:-
An in-line Music Font change (like Note Spacing change)
This would allow incipits in antique font and performance from modern notation.

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Careful, or they might issue dicta against your ficta!

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Thanks a lot!!

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I’m currently trying to make this font work in my MuseScore 3.7 Evolution, which, contrary to the ‘official’ versions of MuseScore does allow to load external fonts.
I needed to teach MuseScore to take the x-offset for the noteheads from the fonts’ metadata rather than just blindly tacking the stems to the left or right of the noteheads, which is done now, but I ran into an issue with the brace glyph and its y-offset:
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This is happening with this font only, so suspect a bug in the font.
I could work around this, by not using the brace glyph of this font, but would rather not have to add this special casing to the code.

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Yes, the baselines are off, for some reason. I’ll fix them.

Here’s a revised version 1.001.

Valerio 1.001.zip (48.4 KB)

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Thanks! This indeed fixed it.

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So…I can’t switch font in mid-piece? At least I haven’t found a way to do it.
That kind of makes this cool thing useless to me.

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Can you describe what you’re trying to achieve?

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Well, I think it may be the same requirement as mine (perhaps I was insufficiently explicit) - incipit in antique font, main transcription in modern font.

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It is possible to create additional clefs, which can be set to use the Medieval glyph SMuFL range; and you can create a Notehead Set using Valerio’s noteheads, even when the Music Font is something else. For the Prolation/Tempus indicator, you might have to get more creative, but it’s not impossible.

Of course, the chances of these glyphs actually matching the design of whatever your source material is, is very low, so it’s just a cosmetic effect on the incipit’s appearance, rather than “information” about your source.

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I also am looking for this functionality. I’ve been able to do everything but the rests since there doesn’t seem to be a way to ignore horizontal spacing. See this topic: Change key signature symbols

I look forward to trying out your font, Ben, although I also would really like to be able to apply it just to an incipit.