Deciphering musical notation

After half a century of only Willi Apel's The notation of polyphonic music (English 1942, German 1962) introduced the reading of original sheet music, two new textbooks on early music notation have now been published. However, although both are entitled "Notationskunde", they could not be more different; a comparison would be like comparing apples and pears. The book by Schmid, professor emeritus of musicology from Tübingen, is largely similar to Apel's, while Paulsmeier, who taught the subject for 30 years at the Basel Academy of Ancient Music, presents something completely independent.

Schmid's aim is to present the development of musical notation from the Middle Ages to the year 1900, with glimpses of ancient predecessors, neumes, tablatures, etc. A central concern for him is to "awaken an understanding of the functions of writing and its active role in the process of compositional history". The very clearly laid out chapters are regularly accompanied by tasks in which, for example, original notation shown in facsimile is to be translated into modern notation or knowledge questions are to be answered. This shows the book's origins in university teaching, where musicology students had to master this material in one (!) semester. The tasks set are announced as a "digital course", but these are simply outsourced text tasks in pdf format, although something completely different would have been possible here. It is also strange that the book uses an awkward transcription with pseudo-historical musical notation from the so-called Munich School, which will hopefully not spread thanks to Schmid's knowledge of notation.

Paulsmeier's publication is the first of a total of three volumes devoted solely to the notation of the 17th and 18th centuries - a period that Schmid covers in just a few pages, as there is little systematic to report here and the music is apparently easy to decipher, apart from the proportions that are important in practice. The other two volumes will then deal with the late 12th to 14th and the 15th and 16th centuries. Paulsmeier's starting point is also the original music, but she expressly wants to stay there: she refrains from translating it into modern notation, but instead uses numerous facsimiles as a guide to reading and independently reproducing the recorded music. The author also encourages the reader to sing or play the examples - after all, it is about music (at the same time, this refers to the origin of the teaching at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis). The abundance of examples does not serve to exemplify a system, but rather shows the many pragmatic deviations from a background notation system, as they have always been practiced by composers and musicians.

As I said, apples or pears: if you want to gain an insight into the development of our musical notation with a manageable amount of effort, you should read Schmid's book. But if you want to gain a more detailed knowledge of music recorded in original notation, we recommend Paulsmeier's course.

Manfred Hermann Schmid, Notationskunde. Schrift und Komposition 900-1900, Kassel etc.: Bärenreiter 2012 (Bärenreiter Studienbücher Musik 18)

Karin Paulsmeier, Notationskunde 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, Basel: Schwabe 2012 (Schola Cantorum Basiliensis Scripta 2)