(Lat.: ‘sign of congruence’).
The term comes from the theorist Anonymus 12 (c1400; ed. CoussemakerS, iii, 483; CSM, xxxv (1990), 64), who described it as ‘ubi cantus universi congruunt’ (‘where all the voices come together’). But Anonymus 12 was trying to distinguish twelve different signs in music. The surviving sources are by no means consistent in their use of these signs or in their shape; and the term is used today to describe the mark written like a fermata or segno with a wide range of different meanings in sources from about 1300 to 1650. They can denote the point where a canonic voice enters (or ends), the point where other voices enter, the point from which the music of a secular song repeats, some kind of a fermata, a point of embellishment, and much else. For illustration see Porta, Costanzo, fig.2.
RiemannL12 (‘Signum’)
C. Warren: ‘Punctus organi and cantus coronatus in the Music of Dufay’, Dufay Conference: Brooklyn, NY, 1974, 128–43
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