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1.76 custos

ES: custos, I: custos, guida, F: guidon, D: Notenzeiger, Custos, NL: ?, DK: ?, S: ?, FI: vihje.

A custos (plural: custodes) is a staff symbol that appears at the end of a staff line with monophonic musical contents (i.e., with a single voice). It anticipates the pitch of the first note of the following line and thus helps the player or singer to manage line breaks during performance, which enhances the readability of a score.

Custodes were frequently used in music notation until the 16th century. There were different appearances for different notation styles. Nowadays, they have survived only in special forms of musical notation such as the Editio Vaticana, dating from the beginning of the 20th century

See also

No cross-references.