A Brief History Of Music Notation

Music notation is somewhat like the Chinese language. Even though the alphabet as a writing system is more efficient, the ideograms have almost 5000 years of “extra meaning” embedded in them…cultural depth that an alphabet cannot possibly convey…a historical treasure that as inefficient and cumbersome as it is has too much value to discard. For example, the character of a Mother and Child together has a third meaning, “good”. How can those four letters express that level of “good”? They cannot, and something fundamental like the importance of family is lost when you strip away the characters. Repeat that times thousands of characters and combinations.
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