Norton Manual of Music Notation [Paperback]

George Heussenstamm (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0393955265 | ISBN-13: 978-0393955262 | Publication Date: February 17, 1987 | Edition: 1st

The Norton Manual of Music Notation is designed to serve as a practical guide to music handwriting and music-writing procedures. It provides the music student with an essential tool for learning to put notes down on paper with clarity and speed. At the same time, it serves as an indispensable reference to a wide variety of notational conventions.

Part I deals with ELEMENTS OF NOTATION, arranged in the order they are found in printed music, i.e., clefs, followed by key signatures, time signatures, etc. For each element, a model, a model is given and, where appropriate, simple drills provided.

In part II, the ELEMENTS ARE COMBINED and the student is introduced to considerations of spacing, changes of meter, clef, and key as well as the notation of syncopation and irregular divisions of the beat.

Part III delineates SCORING PRACTICES ranging from notating two lines of music on one staff to discussions of transposing instruments, orchestral score layouts, and the extraction of instrumental parts.

The author provides an appendix designed for those who wish to achieve more professional results; copying tools, materials, and techniques, as well as popular-music notation are described in detail.

George Heussenstamm is a frequently-performed composer who has prepared his own scores for years. The copying skills he developed enabled him to give very successful courses in music notation at several California universities. The present book is the practical result of his experience as a teacher and professional copyist.

Editorial Reviews

From the Author

This book is essential for all composers and arrangers. My book covers all essential aspects of traditional music notation. My experience as a teacher of music theory at the college level has shown that students of composition are very weak in their knowledge of the rights and wrongs of music notation. My book serves to correct this fault in a clear and concise manner. Even for those composers who produce musical scores on a computer program, they must have a clear grasp of notational principles, since the computer does not know all of the rules. A score that is correct in every way in terms of notation is extremely important if you expect to receive performance. -- George Heussenstamm

Product Details

• Paperback: 168 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition (February 17, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393955265
• ISBN-13: 978-0393955262
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #119,195 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I didn't find it that helpful, October 13, 2000

By 

Dave Hollinden (Madison, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Norton Manual of Music Notation (Paperback)

This book is essentially a primer on the basics of how to notate music by hand, meaning how to draw noteheads, space things, etc. It does not contain information on score layout, terminology, etc. that are also essential to notating a piece of music. For instance, it will tell you how to draw a fermata, but not the common practice rules for how and where it should appear in an orchestral score and parts. Since I was looking more for these specific rules rather than for the basics, I was disappointed with the book.

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars friendly and indispensable, July 12, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Norton Manual of Music Notation (Paperback)

Everyone who writes down music needs to own a copy of this, not just composers and arrangers, but music students, copyists, transcribers, and so on. It is by far the clearest, most useful, and most practical book on the subject. It is not encyclopedic, though, so eventually you may need to supplement it with other books.

Also recommended: PENTATONIC SCALES FOR THE JAZZ-ROCK KEYBOARDIST by Jeff Burns.

20 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great, February 29, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Norton Manual of Music Notation (Paperback)

I found particulary useful the advice about how actually to draw musical symbols, and I enjoyed reading the chapter on "Popular-Music Notation", which really has to do with special notational practices for film, television, and recording session use,--although I happen to have no need for this sort of thing myself.

I have one small objection to lodge, however: the author uses the word "meter" through out to mean time signature. Though the distinction is moot in this context, at this stage of notation, it is important at an earlier stage of notation--that is to say, you need to understand the difference between "meter" and "time signature" in order to decide properly what time signature to use.

The distinction is analogous to that between "key" and "key signature". A key signature of two sharps, for example, tells us to sharp all F's and C's and only implies that we are in the key of D major or B minor. A tonal piece of any length and complexity will at some point change key without changing its key signature. Just so, a time signature of 3/4 tells us there will be three quarter notes worth of time in each measure and only implies that we will hear groupings of three beats or pulses. A piece of any length and complexity written will at some point change meter without changing its time signature.