Every art form has basic material needs to realize their vision. Pottery? Clay, water, a potter’s wheel, and often sculpting tools. Architecture? Fine point pencils, straightedges, a compass, and lots of drafting paper. Food? Basic ingredients, prep utensils, cookware or bakeware, and often heat. Smithing? Raw metals, protective clothing, a hammer and anvil, and a forge. The list goes on! Form and function, stature and structure, design for purpose or pleasure, art in service to others or to itself is everywhere and all of it has basic material needs that must be met before the craftsman’s vision can be realized. Given the right conditions, most things are able to persist indefinitely once they are made, as is or by record or account. While physical objects can be drawn if need be and ideas preserved with words, how might music be preserved?

Oral music traditions only need rested and trained voices, air, a solid footing, and memory; however that last one is the most fickle. Notwithstanding the persistence of a culture to remember its history, past music would fade into obscurity were it not for printed music. While the technology and methodology for recording music has changed dramatically in the last 500 years, especially in the last century, two things have remained constant for millennia: paper and ink.

The history of paper is nearly as long and fabled as history itself. The ancient Egyptians used matter from the papyrus plant to produce a crude, but lightweight material on which to scribe their records in an effort to divorce themselves from record keeping on labor-intensive vellum. The ancient Israelites used vellum; their nomadic lifestyle determined that animal skin would be the most reliable resource for scribing material. Later, the 2nd century BC Chinese Han dynasty would develop the first known precursor of the macerated pulp paper we know today. Somehow, Arabs seized knowledge of this process in the 8th century AD and introduced it to Europe through Bagdad in the 13th century. Prior to the Renaissance in Europe, parchment had been used almost exclusively. Finally, methods of mass production devised in the European industrial revolution coupled with refinements to the maceration process discovered by 19th century Canadian inventor, Charles Fenerty, would introduce to the world the cheap, high-quality paper we now take for granted. More than half of all modern paper products are produced by China, the United States, and Japan, and the most profitable paper company in the world is the United States’ International Paper. The assortment of paper available today for a seemingly endless variety of uses is certainly astounding.

Compared to paper, the history of ink is turbid for there is no definitive first inventor. While several cultures around the world had independently invented ink, most methods of production had one thing in common: soot. Given the synonymous nature of fire and civilization, it can be assumed that soot (also known as lampblack or carbon black) was just a cheap and convenient marking medium people discovered could be used as pigment. Pigments would then be suspended in carriers such as water, animal fat, or resins. Primary origins of ink include the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Israel, China, India, and Rome. Grass, hair, sprigs, and needles were all used for scribing until 10th century AD when the fountain pen was invented in Egypt. For over four thousand years, the chemicals that made up ink remained nearly the same. It would not be until the invention of the Gutenberg printing press in the 15th century that the precursor to the ink we use today would be invented. Older inks blurred or gummed up the paper or typeset. To fix this, a new combination of lampblack, turpentine, and walnut oil was made for the press; this formula would serve as a guide by which our modern inks are derived. Today, inks can appear, disappear, change color, and iridesse due to heat, specific wavelengths of light, moisture, and more. Ink can also come in a variety of colors designed for a wide array of applications.

It is incredible just how far we have come to have attained these things we all enjoy and rely upon to make our lives easier and more comfortable. And yet, paper and ink alone are not enough to preserve music. It’s not good enough just to have a substrate to write upon and a pigment medium with which to scribe. A device to transfer ink to paper and a method of notation are equally important. These are things we will discuss in part two of “Tools of the Trade”.

One behalf of everyone at BEAM Publishing,

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