Performance Practice of Sacred Harp Music - Parallels With Early Music

Parallels With Early Music

The two traditional Sacred Harp practices just noted—unwritten accidentals and unwritten dotting—have parallels in older European music.

The music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance was often annotated under the assumption of musica ficta, which were particular raisings and lowerings of notes by the interval of a semitone, not written in the music notation. Authentic performance of such music must rely on the best available musicological scholarship to interpret the difficult and obscure rules governing when musica ficta should be introduced.

Extra dotting was common in the Baroque era, when it was often referred to by the French term notes inégales, "unequal notes". Again, the scholarly issues concerning whether or not to dot are vexed.