Renaissance choral music was written without bar lines, or had bars in places that were different for each part (i.e. not determined by any time signature).
Modern bar systems distort the intentions of the Renaissance composer, and actually make some pieces harder to read.
An important point is that in modern notation, a long note can get divided into two notes that are tied across a barline. Of course, the time value as performed is exactly the same, but the tied note looks syncopated to the modern music reader.
I would love to be able to create scores with no barlines in Notation Composer, but haven't yet figured out how. If I insert a bar line in Alto, for example, then barlines appear in the other choral parts too (which I don't want). I've tried creating a score with no time signature, but that didn't seem to work. I even tried crazy stuff like using a time signature of 64/2 to minimize the number of barlines -- the results were, well,
interesting if not very
useful.
Any ideas? Thanks!
