Cantorum, a plainchant font for Dorico

Cantorum is a new font that allows the user to easily input plainchant notation into Dorico using simple combinations of letters and numbers. It takes advantage of Dorico’s powerful lyric spacing options to allow the user full control over the appearance of the score. It also uses several complex OpenType font features that Dorico supports natively. It’s available now at Notation Central.

Creating Cantorum

Plainchant relies on a rich and complex system of notation comprised of neumes, which are able to communicate a wide range of expression.

With this range of possibilities, though, comes the challenge of engraving plainchant properly. It’s a need for both early music scholars and practicing musicians, since chant notation is still in use all over the world. Although there are existing online tools for creating chant scores, they lack flexibility, and there have been few options to use chant within notation software.

Among the impressive and noble endeavors in this area is Robert Piéchaud’s Medieval 2 for Finale, which has a history dating back to 1999, and was updated in 2017.

Dorico can be used for some types of early music; back in 2019, Claude Lapalme demonstrated various ways of achieving results in Dorico 2.2. More recently, Ben Byram-Wigfield addressed the improvements made in Dorico 3 that made it easier to apply editorial markings. Ben’s also taken us on some Dorico adventures, with the introduction of figured bass notation in Dorico 3.5, and, more recently, an article showcasing a variety of options for making early music notation in Dorico 5.

Steve Horn made some early music fonts for Sibelius in 2009, but those haven’t been updated in many years.

A couple of years ago, Tim Pietzcker created Ambitus, a font for pitch incipits, scales, and range diagrams, that can be used in any software where OpenType features are supported, including word processors and graphic editing programs. As I told him at the time, “Welcome to the black hole of eternal font tweaking” — and indeed he followed up on his initial endeavor with an update just a couple of weeks after the initial release.

Speaking for myself, I’ve created several technical fonts in the past that fill needs in the world of music notation and publishing, like MusGlyphs, MusAnalysis, and MusFrets, which have found their way into wide use. But figuring out a way to input chant notation directly into Dorico is something I’ve long wanted to figure out.

One specific use case for me was replicating the 1906 English Hymnal, which includes both plainchant and standard notation:

Easy to install and versatile in use

All of the examples in this article were created using Cantorum. It’s easy to learn and simple to input.

First of all, installation is easy: you just install the Cantorum font on your Mac or Windows computer in the usual manner, ready for use. It doesn’t rely on any plug-in or additional software; you just need to set up your Dorico project using Cantorum’s recommended settings, or begin a project from the blank Dorico template included with Cantorum.

The neumes are entered using a dedicated line of lyrics: single pitches are input as simple numbers, and melismatic neumes are input as y,x, where y is the reference pitch and x is the interval contour of the melisma:

There is a rich array of neumes available, representing every shape in the standard chant repertoire. Here are a few possible forms of the porrectus, for example:

Neumes can be easily grouped into complex melismas with full control over their spacing, as well as duration dots, icta, and episema:

Cantorum can also notate puncta cava and linea puncta, including zero-width forms that allow multiple puncta to be input at the same rhythmic position:

Clefs, custodes, brackets, and accidentals are also easy to input, as well:

Here’s a video tutorial explaining how to use Cantorum and what it can do.

Limitations

Cantorum is incredibly versatile and will easily reflow, size and space with your music automatically, and it can be easily copied and pasted to other places in your project. However, it isn’t semantic; that is, you can’t perform any musical operations on it in the usual way, such as transposing or otherwise changing the pitches or durations of notes. Any changes must be made by re-applying the lyric syllable(s) that correspond to the neume(s) or other glyph(s) you wish to change.

Cantorum is built for use in Dorico. Use in other software may be possible, but is not currently supported.

Available at Notation Central

Cantorum is available for purchase on Notation Central, the marketplace for music notation technology.

It sells for $49.99, and includes:

• The Cantorum font file
• Complete documentation
• A quick reference guide for the user to keep handy while becoming accustomed to the intuitive entry system
• Several example Dorico files
• An empty chant Dorico file to help get started quickly with recommended settings
• The full set of the Crimson Pro text font, chosen for an aesthetically complementary pairing with the plainchant notation

I’m committed to its ongoing expansion, so if there are complex neume shapes that you would like to see added, feel free to contact me and I’ll create them.