I looked up Laon, saw the offending sign, and thought "That's no uncinus; it's just a sloppily scribbled 'a'!" Then I got to the end of the video and laughed. Glad we agree! Primitive typos are no big deal, however, if you sing the chant enough to recognize them and not care. Assuming the common knowledge that the manuscript was intended for the precentor to train his choir off of, it would make sense that mistakes were left uncorrected, for the manuscript was a guideline to his memory, not a law. Mainstream semiologists, on the other hand, tend to see the manuscript as divine writ, and that never made sense to me. I'd wager most of these guys couldn't sing without the page if they tried.
I looked up Laon, saw the offending sign, and thought "That's no uncinus; it's just a sloppily scribbled 'a'!" Then I got to the end of the video and laughed. Glad we agree!
Primitive typos are no big deal, however, if you sing the chant enough to recognize them and not care. Assuming the common knowledge that the manuscript was intended for the precentor to train his choir off of, it would make sense that mistakes were left uncorrected, for the manuscript was a guideline to his memory, not a law. Mainstream semiologists, on the other hand, tend to see the manuscript as divine writ, and that never made sense to me. I'd wager most of these guys couldn't sing without the page if they tried.
Very interesting! We are human and the manuscripts were write by humans.