Rastral
The rastral ( middle lat . Rastrum : "rake", "rake") is a tool in music notation with which the five staves of a system are drawn.
Digger
A rastral as a grave mark in traditional music engraving is made of brass or steel and looks like a fork with five prongs. For the music printing it was used to score the staff lines in the needle plate with the help of a ruler. The notes were then hammered in with stamps.
There are ten-line rastrals for piano systems and other ruling machines , with which an entire sheet of music could be prepared with different grouping of the systems. In the meantime this technique has become very rare. The computer notation has replaced these tools.
Writing implement
The rastral is also available as a parallel arrangement of five nibs , which musicians use to make music paper out of normal writing paper. The five tips have a fine gap on the lower side for this use.
The composer Igor Stravinsky preferred an individual design of the sheet music and constructed a Rastral as a writing roller, which he called Stravigor . He tried to patent this device in 1911.
Lines with ink are rarely used today. A musician who does not have music paper at hand can glue five leads for clutch pencils together with adhesive tape, or ballpoint pen leads the same thickness as those used for multi-color ballpoint pens.
Grid spacing
The expression "rastral" is still used in music philology in the composition raster width : This describes the distance between the two outermost staves. The raster width for engraved notes is usually between four and eight millimeters, depending on the context. It can be much larger for handwritten notes.
literature
- Gustav Schilling (ed.): Encyclopedia of the Entire Musical Sciences or Universal Lexicon of Tonkunst, Stuttgart: Köhler 1841, Vol. 5, p. 643.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Stephen Walsh: Stravinsky: a creative spring: Russia and France, 1882-1934, Univ. of California Press 2003, p. 609. ISBN 978-0-520-22749-1 [1] .