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Annotational accidentals (musica ficta)

In European music from before about 1600, singers were expected to chromatically alter notes at their own initiative according to certain rules. This is called musica ficta. In modern transcriptions, these accidentals are usually printed over the note.

Support for such suggested accidentals is included, and can be switched on by setting suggestAccidentals to #t.

\relative {
  fis' gis
  \set suggestAccidentals = ##t
  ais bis
}

This will treat every subsequent accidental as musica ficta until it is unset with \set suggestAccidentals = ##f. A more practical way is to use \once \set suggestAccidentals = ##t, which can even be defined as a convenient shorthand:

ficta = { \once \set suggestAccidentals = ##t }
\score { \relative
  \new MensuralVoice  {
    \once \set suggestAccidentals = ##t
    bes'4 a2 g2 \ficta fis8 \ficta e! fis2 g1
  }
}

See also

Internals Reference: Accidental_engraver, AccidentalSuggestion.