Tools of the Trade - Part Two
Every art form has basic material needs to realize their vision. Our primary craft here at BEAM Publishing is paper music. Paper/sheet music requires four things: paper, ink, a notation system, and a process to combine the three. Paper and ink, commodities with ancient histories, were both covered in Part One. Music notation will not be covered until Part Three; this is because background information is needed to appreciate exactly what music notation accomplishes. Paper and ink exist to facilitate one of the most ancient forms of communication, writing; a technology which without, music notation would not come to exist. Let’s take a closer look at writing.
It might be odd to consider writing as technology, but prior to a culture’s independent invention of writing, oral traditions were the typical means to maintain a history; this included music. Because memory is dependent upon recall, it’s inconvenient to have important accounts die with the people who carried them. It’s also inconvenient for memories to become faded or forgotten due to lack of repetition or novelty. Lastly, trade operates better when it can be tracked. People cannot be expected to remember everything! These reasons were the catalyst for ancient peoples to record such details with accuracy and precision.
Physical objects could be preserved with illustrations or pictographs, but the abstract first required the invention of tangible representation. In the race for self-preservation, languages the world over invented symbols that described ideas, things, or actions. Good symbols tend to be easy to reproduce mechanically or orally. In some languages, every word was represented with a singular symbol called a logogram. This was useful because the symbols could have the illustrative aspect of a pictograph, while being easier to reproduce. A key benefit is the constructive nature of these symbols as they could be combined in different orientations to represent new ideas without adding additional length to the overall message. The main drawback to a logographic system is the sheer volume of symbols to memorize. This makes “sounding it out” more like “squint until you see it”.
In other languages, words and syllables are written with individual symbols called phonograms (more commonly known as, letters) expressed with spoken sounds called phonemes. This system need only represent individual phonetic sounds. Syllables and words can then be constructed with letters to represent ideas, thus eliminating the need to conjure a new symbol for every new idea. This is useful because new ideas could be systematically constructed with previously existing words and syllables or with new ones. Another benefit includes the ability to sound out unfamiliar words. The main drawback is that constructive words tend to get long depending on the complexity of the object being described; this is especially apparent in German [Backpfeifengesicht ist urkomisch!] or in chemistry [Sulfur hexafluoride is hilarious!]. Either way, a collection of phonograms (an alphabet) or logograms and a correlating linguistic system used in conjunction with paper and ink is what allowed cultures to take account and retain their history.
But what about music? Words are easier to speak from notation than a melody is to play. Words have phonetically identifiable shapes and patterns that are usually not pitch dependent. The cadence and tempo of a speaker, although important at times, usually makes no difference to a listener’s ability to understand. As long as the phonetic shape is correct, the idea will be perceived. However, music is much more sensitive. Music can only be reproduced if everyone agrees on tuning, intervals, rhythm, and tempo assuming they are able discern these basic values at all. Meaningful symbols are only good if they can be easily understood and reproduced mechanically or orally, so how can written notation for music with the coherency of written speech come into being? Now that background has been established, we will specifically tackle music notation in Part Three of “Tools of the Trade”.
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