ON THE RULING OF STAVES
nocturne · edition lx · 9 august
Five at a Time
Before printed music paper was cheap, the lines came before the music: five nibs fixed in a block,charged with ink and drawn once across the sheet. The instrument wears as it goes, and the wear can be measured.
THE INSTRUMENTA rastrum — Latin raster, a rake — is a five-pointed penfor ruling staves on blank paper; one able to lay two ormore staves at a stroke is called compound. There was atrade in it: the régleur ruled paper for a living. Rakeswere in use by the fourteenth century, five nibs forpolyphony and four for chant, and lasted until printedstaff paper grew cheap.THE FOUR FIGURESA ruling is described by four things: whether the sheetstands upright or lies oblong; how many staves to thepage; the total span, from the top line of the first staff tothe bottom line of the last; and the span of one staff alone.In millimetres, taken from the centre of each line, so thatink spreading in the paper cannot move the figure.Written down: UP_10_250–250.5_12.5–13.WHAT IT SETTLESNibs splay, clog and break, and then do so identically onevery sheet after. Set the ruling beside the paper’swatermark and you have a paper-type: not a date but abatch — the pile that was actually on the desk. Bach’srakes spread and distorted with use; in the fifthBrandenburg the outer, lowest prong was virtuallybroken. Mozart ruled ten staves to a page before Viennaand twelve after. In 1911 Stravinsky built a rake onrollers, called it the Stravigor, never followed up thepatent, and used them for the rest of his life.
first pass — a bead of ink where the rake was set downthe charge failing at the far end; the pass was not finished in one dipre-dippedthe fourth nib splayed: its line runs heavier than the other foura skip, where a chain-line ridge under the paper lifted the rakethe outer nib gives out. It will give out on every sheet after this one.
Rastrology after Grove and the CESEM–MarcMus paper-studies project (FCSH–NOVA); Bach’s rakes after John Eliot Gardiner,Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven, ch. 7; Mozart’s paper after Alan Tyson; the Stravigor after Stephen Walsh.
ruled tonight · another sheet tomorrow