Ancient Greek Musical Notation Symbols

[rwenoch]

Any possibility of adding the symbols for ancient Greek musical notation? Unlike modern music notation, these symbols consist almost entirely of rotated, inverted, or slightly modified Greek and Latin letters. The only serif fonts I'm aware of that include these characters are Quivira and Alexander, the latter of which is italic-only unfortunately. Most academic publications covering this area use a jerry-rigged sans serif font.

Versions of these symbols were cut by a medieval type foundry, but some of those glyphs have issues as well (see image below).

[psb1558]

Last year I decided (and announced, #318) that I considered Junicode to be a mature project, and I had decided not take it in new directions. This would definitely be a new direction, especially since I know very little about musical notation, and I would be making a new style of some 70 glyphs from scratch, with little in the way of models. With regret, I'll have to give this one a pass.

[alerque]

Just a PSA, the Ancient Greek Musical Notation that first appeared in Unicode 4.1 is (at least partially) supported by Bravura Text. Also possibly Noto Music and Symbola (for more bland shapes).

I would be interested in hearing about other fonts with broad support for assorted musical notations too, but I understand why this project would consider it out of scope. It is not a trivial undertaking and even among notation systems used in the same era there is quite a bit of variation on designs and layout decisions that a project would have to weigh and form an opinion on.

[rwenoch]

Thanks for the tip. I just installed BravuraText.otf and scrolled through the entire set of glyphs. I didn't see any Ancient Greek Musical Notation symbols, but I would love to be mistaken. The unicode block U+1D200 isn't used in this font file, so if you could point me to it's position, that would be great.

Noto and Symbola have the sort of "default" sans-serif/lineart versions of these characters that many font developers just copy into their font file if they want to include this section of unicode.

There are a few fonts out there that have tried to tackle these characters typographically (Avdira, Alexander, Quivira), but none of them have attempted to duplicate these medieval designs or grapple with the original ancient figures.

[kenmcd]

but none of them have attempted to duplicate these medieval designs or grapple with the original ancient figures.

Hmmm... I have been modifying another of that series of fonts (the original free versions) which has a more medieval printed look - much like your image - but I have been focusing on the Latin.
Maybe it would be appropriate to add these symbols to that font, and have that medieval look.
Example:

That looks more like your sample image.
Do you know what typeface was used in the image?
What document is your sample image?
Where did it come from? (archive.org? or?)
Does the code block of 70 code points cover all the needed characters?
What are the "medieval designs" and the "original ancient figures?"
I do not know what I am looking at in your image.

[rwenoch]

It's from a book first published in 1652. Your sample looks great. I'd love to work with you on this, but does it make sense to take this conversation elsewhere? Please let me know.

[kenmcd]

Hmmm... think I already set-up a repo for it.
Have to check.
Could be set to private.
Or simply not there. ;-)
I have been doing other stuff so I have to figure-out where I am with that font.
The original font is from around 1550, so similar time frame.
Lemme get my stuff together and we can get out of Peter's in box.