Source Book of Proposed Music Notation Reforms by Gardner Read; Musiknotation: Von der

Syntax des Notenstichs zum EDV-gesteuerten Notensatz by Helen Wanske

Review by: Mel Wildberger
Notes, Second Series, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Mar., 1991), pp. 804-806
Published by: Music Library Association
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804
enacted in 1909." Actually, 1909 repre-
sents the third general revision rather than
the first copyright statute. Indeed, Fink's
section on copyright (a complex and criti-
cally important topic) is too slender and in-
complete to offer any real guidance to the
student. Comprising eleven pages (four of
which reproduce forms PA and SR, which
belong more properly in an appendix), the
chapter quotes extensively from the copy-
right law with little elaboration from the
author. Although he mentions the word
"property" in this chapter, Fink avoids
addressing several important concepts,
including copyright as a property right,
intellectual property, particulars of inter-
national copyright, and many other "real
world" basics. This chapter could also have
directed the reader to the valuable "free"
legal-advice organization, Volunteer Law-
yers and Accountants for the Arts. The
bibliography at the end of this chapter fails
to mention Melville B. Nimmer's invalu-
able four-volume Nimmer on Copyright:A
Treatise on the Law of Literary,Musical, and
ArtisticPropertyand theProtectionof Ideas (New
York: Matthew Bender, 1983).
From my viewpoint, the section dealing
with theater can only be described as ap-
palling. Not only is the writing style pain-
fully pedantic, but the material is liberally
laced with examples and situations that are
either untrue, misleading, or naive. In dis-
cussing musical shows, for example, Fink
says:
The script of a musical is called the 'book.'
Another term meaning the same thing is
'libretto.' The latter term is derived from
the long tradition of operatic librettos,
which are the scripts of operas. Thus, the
playwright who creates the book for a
musical show is generally called the show's
librettist. The book must come first.
Without a book the show's lyricist and
composer would have no idea of what
types of musical numbers to write or
where they should be placed (p. 301-2).
Theater people do not generally refer to
book writers as librettists. The term
"librettist" is properly reserved for script
writers of operas and or quasi-operas.
As to Fink's contention that "the book
must come first," Stephen Sondheim has
written: "I keep hearing about people who
write books and then give them to com-
posers or composers who write scores and
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NOTES, March 1991
then get a bookwriter. I don't understand
how that works. The piece can't have tex-
ture unless it's all blended .... I go about
starting a song first with the collaborators,
sometimes just with the bookwriter, some-
times with the director" (Craig Zadan,
Sondheim & Co. [New York: Macmillan,
1974] p. 220-21).
The subject areas presented in Fink's book
are extremely diverse and, perhaps for that
reason, not covered in great depth. If a
particular area cannot be discussed in at
least some depth (accuracy notwithstand-
ing), then perhaps the material is not worth
presenting. A haphazard discussion tends
to mislead, and readers are likely to mis-
interpret the ideas. This book is strewn with
many incomplete presentations and even
misconceptions. To take one specific ex-
ample, the aspiring commercial musician
should know that the music :30 for a radio
spot is "cut out" of the :60, and that it is
the :60 that is the "classic form," not the
:30, as Fink misleadingly implies (chart on
p. 161 and text on pp. 160-61). Fink also
does not discuss the drastic differences in
approach and compositional technique re-
quired for radio jingles and television ads.
Fink's indexing could be more thorough.
For example, one finds 'jingles" as a sub-
heading under "advertising music" rather
than as a separate entry of its own. The
glossary is somewhat incomplete. For in-
stance, "doughnut" (or "donut," as it's
spelled in the industry) is mentioned in the
text but not in the glossary, although one
finds definitions of such questionably use-
ful terms as "fuguing tune." The book needs
an appendix giving various forms and boil-
erplate contracts, phone numbers and ad-
dresses of selected record companies and
publishers, and the like.
Unfortunately, Inside the Music Business,
inaccurate and inadequately researched,
cannot supersede the pioneering contri-
butions of Shemel, Krasilovsky, and Bas-
kerville.
WILLIAM PENN
Universityof Connecticut
Source Book of Proposed Music No-
tation Reforms. By Gardner Read.
(Music Reference Collection, 11.) New
York: Greenwood Press, 1987. [xiii, 474
p. ISBN 0-313-25446-X. $45.00.]
Book Reviews
Musiknotation: Von der Syntax des
Notenstichs zum EDV-gesteuerten
Notensatz. By Helen Wanske. Mainz:
Schott, 1988. [457 p. ISBN 3-7957-
2886-X. $75.00.]
Unlike Gardner Read's other treatises on
music notation to which musicians look for
definitive answers to questions regarding
the conventions of music orthography, this
book deals with the unconventional. Also
unlike those earlier efforts, this book is not
very useful, its contents revealing an ap-
palling lack of attention to detail.
The book purports to list (in chronolog-
ical order), describe, and critically analyze
391 systems of notation proposed during
the past three centuries, covering staff, clef
signs, pitch symbols, key signatures, dura-
tion symbols, rests, meter and tempo, and
dynamics and other performance direc-
tions. Read is mainly concerned with a sys-
tem's adaptability to hand-drafting manu-
scripts, rather than its usefulness in typeset
form.
Read's criticisms tend to be jocularly
negative and sarcastic. For example, "There
can be no doubt that this is indeed a 'graphic
notation,' but eccentricity is no substitute
for practicality. Certainly the proposal of
Middlemiss is neither a simplification nor
an improvement of our traditional sys-
tem-only an expression of one man's mis-
guided ego. Visually amusing though it may
be, this notation cannot be regarded as
pointing the way to the future" (p. 237).
The author's profoundly conservative at-
titudes are proclaimed throughout the book
by statements such as "the avant garde is
not noted for its concern with practicality"
(p. 267). He proclaims that the thesaurus
does not concern itself with innovations in
notation necessitated by either "minutely
strict determinism or aleatoric procedures"
that became current in the mid-20th cen-
tury." His conservatism may make his crit-
icism more virulent as systems deviate fur-
ther from standard notation. He speaks of
"all the earnest but misguided reforms of
notation that have appeared with depress-
ing regularity during the past several
hundred years" (p. 327).
Apparently the camera copy for this book
was simply a photographic reproduction of
the manuscript; though badly in need of
editing it was reproduced without that
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805
amenity. In any case, the graphic quality of
the handwritten examples, for which the
author apologizes, renders many of them
illegible or incomprehensible because they
are minute in size, fading (often into non-
existence), or the colors on which some of
the systems depend are not reproduced.
Furthermore, many examples could have
fit the format of the book without being re-
duced, and simple touch-ups with pen and
straightedge could have corrected some in-
stances of fading. To make matters worse,
many of the transcriptions of musical
phrases into their innovative notational
systems were done crudely and inaccu-
rately: there are frequent pitch errors, and
one example is even pasted in upside down,
so that deciphering is often frustrating, to
say the least.
Read displays some uncertainty with for-
eign languages. For instance, the sense of
the phrase "Par un ignorant, qui frissonne
au seul nom de Bemol" is skewed when
translated "For the ignoramus who shivers
at the very word 'flat' [Italics mine]". Ap-
parently unfamiliar with name order in
Hungarian publications, Read lists and in-
dexes Lajos Benke not under his surname,
but his given name.
It would have been helpful if Read had
cited libraries and other sources where ma-
terials that he had examined could be
found, inasmuch as his comments and de-
scriptions are cursory at best, confusing and
misleading at worst. The only index is of
personal names, so to find the entries on
Klavarskribo or Equitone without knowing
the names of their inventors is possible only
by paging through.
Although perhaps unlikely to be under-
taken a second edition of this book that
would address the multifarious inadequa-
cies and errors of the first edition, pref-
erably in larger format and typeset, would
be the only way to convert this rather siz-
able effort into something usable.
Helen Wanske's Musiknotation will be
useful mainly to, and is intended for, the
specialist who wants to develop or improve
a system for typesetting music using elec-
tronic data-processing equipment, includ-
ing computers and laser printers capable
of producing professional-quality camera
copy for use in publication. Part 1, occu-
pying two-thirds of the book, thoroughly
examines music notation's typographical
image, describes the physical characteris-
806
tics of signs and symbols used in engraved
music, and considers their skilled deploy-
ment in the context of the score. It does
not concern itself with the actual shop
techniques of metal-plate music engraving,
except to show how their peculiarities have
influenced modern notation. The premise
of the book is that printed music notation
reached its culmination with metal-plate
engraving, and that the best that electron-
ically produced music typesetting can do is
to try to emulate the classic products of the
artisan engravers and the journeymen who
designed their tools.
Part 2 presents suggestions and proce-
dures for producing, by electronic means,
music of the quality described in Part 1. The
language in this scond part is full of neo-
logisms from the world of computers, in-
cluding English words in German phonetic
spellings. Good comprehension of this sec-
tion requires profound familiarity with the
principles of printed music notation (as
outlined in Part 1) and with the construc-
tion and operation of data-processing
equipment.
The ranks of classic engravers are di-
minishing rapidly in Germany-and in-
deed are almost nonexistent in the rest of
the world-causing serious problems in the
production of printed music that have not
been alleviated by new apprentices nor en-
tirely satisfactory alternate methods. In view
of the impending demise of the old craft
and the simultaneous rise of the new tech-
nology, Wanske has taken an important step
in helping to effect as smooth a transition
as possible from tried-and-true methods to
their imitation by electronic means.
The author points out that the adapta-
tion of electronic apparatus to music type-
setting has lagged far behind other appli-
cations because music is not a purely linear
phenomenon, and even its linear aspects
are much more complicated than ordinary
text setting making its adaptability to elec-
tronic solutions more difficult. Also, there
is not nearly so great a demand for the
typesetting of music as of words and num-
bers. She proposes large-scale cooperation
among music publishers, academic institu-
tions, and music-engraving firms so that the
costs of research and development might
be jointly amortized.
In gathering information for her study,
Wanske examined engraved music, read
selected treatises on music notation and
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NOTES, March 1991
engraving (although she apparently missed
Ted Ross's useful book, The Art of Music
Engraving and Processing [Miami: Hansen
Books, 1970]), interviewed engravers, and
conferred with a music publisher and with
data-processing firms. Her attempt to cod-
ify the rules of music notation with the hope
of integrating them into a program for au-
tomated electronic music typesetting has
revealed a great diversity of opinion and
practice in aesthetic matters, such as graphic
design, spacing, and layout. It became ob-
vious that music notation can never be
completely adapted to a computer pro-
gram to suit every taste or to cover every
exception. Because the music engravers who
are to be emulated rely so heavily on in-
tuition ("eyeballing")to produce spacing that
is both graceful and economical of space,
it follows that to achieve similarly satisfac-
tory results with electronic means will nec-
essarily be less automated and more labor-
intensive than ordinary typesetting.
I have only a few quibbles with this book.
Wanske states that the symbols v and
are interchangeable, a notation that has
often led to misinterpretation. To the all-
important subject of layout she devotes
several pages of insightful writing in Part
1, but in Part 2 her suggestions for apply-
ing those concepts to computerized music
typesetting seem somewhat skimpy. It is
exactly in matters of layout that most music
typesetting in this country fails. Finally,
Wanske's limited bibliography does not even
list Gardner Read's Music Notation (2d ed.
Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1969), to which
she refers repeatedly in the text. Never-
theless, this unique volume is an indis-
pensable reference source for firms, indi-
viduals, and institutions using or practicing
music typesetting; for scholars who con-
cern themselves with the proprieties of
music notation; and most especially for
anyone who is engaged in the development
or improvement of electronic hardware and
software for use in the typesetting of mu-
sical notation.
MELWILDBERGER
Nevada City, California
Music and the Personal Computer: An
Annotated Bibliography. Compiled by
William J. Waters. (Music Reference
Collection, 22.) New York: Green-