SearchResearch (7/2/26): What you need to know about image search (2/3)

Search by image can literally... 

 

Part of a choir book page from Venice, mid-1300s. P/C Dan. 

... help you understand your world.  Here's a bit of understanding the world that I had just this week.  

This photo shows a piece of a large page taken from a choir book that was taken apart many decades ago.  As a fan of  Early Music, I bought this to capture a bit of the music of the period.  (To hear singing from this kind of score take a listen here.)  

I recognize the 4-line staff (the red lines--modern music notation has 5 lines), and I recognize the Latin text below the notes.  But I'm curious: what is this thing on the far left of the staff?  (The thing that looks like a person with a fat belly, made up from the square notes and a big triangle.)  

The obvious approach is to do a Search-By-Image.  

When I do this, Google tells me that "This image shows stemmed semibreve groups from a 14th-century liturgical manuscript. These musical notations are found on folio 5v of a manuscript in the Bodleian Library." The link to the Bodleian Library takes you to this: 

P/C Bodelian Library
Figure 2. Ave vivens hostia/ Ave vivens hostia/ Organum
(Bodleian Library, lat. liturg. e. 42, fol. 4r).

To understand this, you probably have to go look up what that means. I found that stemmed semibreve groups refer to a specific notation used in 14th-century mensural notation. Instead of representing a single, long whole note, these groups are a series of smaller, subdivided notes (semibreves) strung together and marked by stems and dots to dictate complex rhythms.  

That's great... but it doesn't answer my real question which is what's the big triangle thing?  

I notice that each line of music has a triangle with a square on top, next to a pair of squares that bracket one of the lines (either the 3rd or 4th line).  

I know enough music notation to recognize that the far left edge of the music is where the clef symbol usually goes.  

To find out, I can go into AI mode and ask the question directly about the image: 

This is great and accords with what I already know, but now, of course, let's double check this.  

A quick regular search for [C-clef] leads to several articles about clef notations evolved over the years.  We learn that a C-clef in Gregorian chant notation looks like this (inside the red box):  

That's close, but not quite right.  

Reading further we learn that the F-clef looks like this: 

I also did a search on [mensural notation] and found the Wikipedia article on clefs used in Medieval music notation, with this lovely illustration comparing different clefs, and their evolution over time: 

As you can see, the clef in the original manuscript (at the very top) looks a LOT more like an F clef than a C clef with a decoration.  

In any case, we've resolved the question:  that massive glyph is a clef, showing the singers where the C note was based.  It might be a C clef OR an F clef, but we can leave that to the musicologists to figure out.  We now know what it denotes! 

In a world of music notation that looks like this, with multiple F clefs and a gloriously illuminated intial letter D, it's easy to imagine that the C clef would be transformed to an F clef by the stroke of a monk's pen.  

The "Dragon D" music manuscript. "Deus Omnium" from SC Library.

(Searcher Caution: Bing image search completely messes this up, identifying the original clef image as a piece of Chinese calligraphy.)   

SearchResearch Lesson 

I'll say it again, check your work. Always get a separate source that agrees with your interpretation.  

Keep searching!