Capturing Music: The Story of Notation[em] [/em]

Before the era of recording—before wax cylinders, vinyl, or digital media—songwriters, composers, and musicians relied on sheet music and musical notation to disseminate their works. In this marvelously witty and engaging chapter of music history, Kelly, a Harvard musicologist, thoughtfully reviews the long process through which musical notation developed. Accompanied by 100 color illustrations, as well as a CD that allows readers to hear how these early compositions might have sounded, Kelly’s chronicle traces the rise of notation from its earliest stages to its more developed manifestations in the late Middle Ages. Along the way, we meet the individuals actively trying to capture sound in verse or notation, from Notker, who used language as a means to capture sound, and Guido the Monk, who revolutionized the writing of music by introducing a very early system of notation that could guide musical performance, to Perotinus, whose notations captured rhythm, and Philippe de Vitry, who ingeniously built upon earlier work to develop scores for longer pieces of music. Kelly uses sidebars for more technical music theory, saving space for the larger story of the personalities who bequeathed musical notation to us and the times in which they lived. [em](Nov.) [/em]