German Organ Tablature Subrange in SMuFL - Proposal

Dear All,

About two years ago I first floated the idea of adding a range dedicated to
German organ tablature to the SMuFL specification in a message posted to
the smufl-discuss list. Since then, I have discussed my ideas in person
with Daniel and several organ tablature experts, and have produced two
organ tablature fonts. I feel the time is now right to make a formal
proposal to the group for the inclusion of an organ tablature range in the
next version of SMuFL.

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BACKGROUND

German organ tablature was an important notational language for keyboard
music during the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. It was the 'first'
notational language of many North German keboardists, including Weckmann
and Buxtehude, and even J.S. Bach made use of it. Organ tablature was not
only used in hand-written manuscripts, but in print as well. The fact that
16th and 17th century music publishers devised ways of typesetting
tablature provides a useful precedent for developing organ tab music fonts.

After familiarizing myself with the orthographic conventions of a variety
of manuscript tablatures and studying the ways in which early printers
systematically broke down tablature notation into its component parts in
order to produce metal type sorts for printing, I devised the following
table of glyphs, which serves as my proposed encoding range in SMuFL:

https://github.com/jmckean83/Moeller/raw/master/German%20Organ%20Tablature%20SMuFL%20Range.pdf

I have also produced two organ tablature fonts using this framework:

   - Möller
   <http://www.johnmckean.info/single-post/2017/04/23/Introducing-%E2%80%9CM%C3%B6ller%E2%80%9D-%E2%80%93-A-Music-Font-for-German-Organ-Tablature>
   - Ammerbach
   <http://www.johnmckean.info/single-post/2017/06/24/%25E2%2580%259CAmmerbach%25E2%2580%259D-%25E2%2580%2593-an-organ-tablature-font-based-on-historical-metal-type>

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ARGUMENT

The fact that sub-ranges have been set aside for French/English,
Italian/Spanish, and German lute tablature, but not German organ tablature
seems like a glaring incongruity to me. When I first suggested adding the
sub-range, someone asked whether or not the necessary symbols for organ
tablature could be cobbled together from other areas of the existing
specification. The simple answer is: no. Although there is no shortage of
alphabetic tablature letters in SMuFL, there is no dedicated or otherwise
obvious place to encode the 'swash' characters used to denote accidentals;
they are entirely unique. Moreover, the hatch-like representation of
rhythmic flags common to organ tablature cannot be suitably represented
using any of the rhythmic stems/flags already present in SMuFL. There is,
in my opinion, a clear need and obvious justification for the establishment
of a dedicated encoding sub-range.

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ENCODING AND USE

Not being aware of any other pending additions to the specification, I took
U+ED60 as the starting point for my proposed organ tab range. This is two
encoding slots after the last one included in the current specification
(U+ED5D / Stockhausen Accidentals), thus leaving a 'buffer zone'; I'm not
sure whether or not this is necessary. If not, two possibilities
immediately come to mind: the organ tab range could simply be shifted up to
begin at U+ED5E, or those two unaccounted for slots could be set aside for
private use within the organ tab range.

Although no scoring software currently provides a feature for setting organ
tablature, it is not inconceivable that such a facility could be made
available in the future. This is particularly easy to imagine in the case
of 'old' german organ tab, where the RH is notated in mensural staff
notation, with the LH notes indicated in tab underneath the staff. As
things stand, it doesn't take much work to create such notations using my
tablature fonts and modified text styles within Sibelius. (See an example
here
<https://static.wixstatic.com/media/549318_888d07cbef7f43fb9cdd282994b41e1e~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_788,h_350,al_c,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01/549318_888d07cbef7f43fb9cdd282994b41e1e~mv2.png>
..)

At present, the easiest way I've found to create notations in the 'new'
German organ tab idiom is in a word processor like MS Word. To this end,
the two tablature fonts that I've created thus far (see links above)
present many of the constituent glyphs from the proposed U+ED60 - U+ED9F
encoding range a second time, in standard alphanumeric encoding slots so
that they can be easily typed using a computer keyboard without constantly
having to copy from a character map or input them using cumbersome unicode
values. (See a visual explanation here.
<https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jmckean83/Moeller/master/M%C3%B6llerFFpane.png>)
Ligature substitutions allow remote code-point glyphs to be easily accessed..

Some might argue that it would be simpler to just create special organ tab
fonts using whatever encoding slots one wishes without regard to relating
them to SMuFL at all, thereby obviating the need to add another range to
the standard. While fonts such as the ones I've created (which aren't, in
fact, SMuFL music fonts given the double-encoding of glyphs for practical
input) are no less effective at present without SMuFL backing, I do think
it would be in the long-term interest of the standard and its aim of being
as comprehensive as possible to adopt this proposed organ tab sub-range.
Who knows what uses future scoring programs or well-designed SMuFL music
fonts might find for organ tab!

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Thanks for your indulgence with this long-winded email! I am eager to hear
your thoughts/comments/feedback.

Regards,
John McKean