NOTATIO

inn 1322 there was a Papal Bull to suppress the semibreve and minim… the latter had been 'invented' (first used?) half a century earlier by Walter Odington . That's interesting. Thomas Morley wrote: "The invention of the minim they ascribe to a certain priest (or who he was I know not) in Nava...

What I am really looking for is something that will cover every element of our system and show its development from first appearance to the present. For example, who invented the staccato dot, how was it first used and positioned, how did various composers use it, how was it engraved by different p...

I have "The Notation of Western Music - An Introduction" by Richard Rastall, (a new digital print of the original 1983 publication). It covers everything from Early Christian neumes up to 1970s avante garde.

I meant back in time for the source, e.g. a 17th-century work will have greater differences between critical and performing editions than a 19th-century work, but I take your point. Commercial publishers have to 'add value' in some way, to make the Neue Edition worth purchasing - particularly when o...

To answer my own original question: I've discussed this elsewhere and come up with the following. In the late 19th century (in UK choral singing, at least), it was apparently common practice for lengthy notes at the ends of phrases not to be held full-length, but rather just finished at the performe...

It's mainly one of intent. A scholarly or critical edition has, as its primary purpose, the accurate rendering of the source material, with some degree of allowance for differences between the source and present-day conventions. Such scores are of course performable. A 'performing edition' has perfo...

And there is one thing one may not forget: Finale is single-threaded. Are you sure? Finale on the Mac typically runs between 10 and 20 threads. It has done so for several versions. It would be interesting to run your tests on Finale 25.5, across the board. Also I'd like to run it on some Macs, to g...

There have certainly been studies on the legibility of text, and how pages that follow 'bad' typographic practices can be shown to be more difficult to read. I see no reason why music would not be similar. 'Good practice' in notation is usually there to avoid ambiguity and to reinforce the message. ...

Nightingale was my first foray into computer notation, and by all accounts it was terrible. I was eventually able to get a cross-grade to Finale, and the difference was night and day.

Here's Antonio Lotti's G clef: