The PSALM Liturgical Music Resource
Special topic: Use of bar-lines, dotted bar-lines, partial bar-lines, and tick marks in chant notation
- The mandatory insertion of a full bar line at the end of each musical phrase (in Common Chant liturgical recitative) tends to break up the musical-textual phrasing unnecessarily. Therefore, the following conventions should be followed:
- If the punctuation at the end of a textual phrase is a period or a colon or semi-colon marking the end of a thought and the final note of the musical phrase is either a whole note or a dotted half note (see h. ii above), the separator between the musical phrases should be a half-bar line (available under the "Custom" option in the Measure tool). The line thickness of the custom half-bar line in the Shape Designer should be 0.5 pt. thick.
- If the end of a textual phrase contains no punctuation, or a comma, or a semi-colon that does not mark the end of a thought, and the final note of the musical phrase is either a half note or a dotted half note (see h. iii above), the separator between the musical phrases should be a tick-mark (available under the Measure tool).
- Dotted bar-lines are sometimes used to indicate metric organization within slower-tempo chant passages, where solid bar-lines and changing time signatures would unduly break up the flow of the musical notation.
- Dotted bar-lines are also used to indicate the two halves of a prokeimenon.
- If a musical phrase spans more than one staff system, the bar-line at the end of the first staff system should be invisible.
- Double bar-lines are used:
- At the ends of several hymns or verses in a set (e.g. stichera)
- To separate verses from refrains (e.g., to separate a "Glory..." from the sticheron that follows, or to separate a refrain such as "Hear me, O Lord" from the psalm verse that precedes it.
- Final bar-lines (thin followed by thick) should be used only at the ends of self-standing liturgical units or sets of hymns.
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