The Notation of Polyphonic Music, 900-1600 [Hardcover]

Willi Apel (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0910956154 | ISBN-13: 978-0910956154 | Publication Date: September 1961 | Edition: 5

This book has an array of information with helpful musical examples & illustrations.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 464 pages
• Publisher: Medieval Academy of Amer; 5 edition (September 1961)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0910956154
• ISBN-13: 978-0910956154
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,042,599 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most renowned book on musical notation, August 3, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Notation of Polyphonic Music, 900-1600 (Hardcover)

This is by far the best book on musical notation. It's field covers the notation of soloist music (keyboard as well as lute tablatures) and ensemble music (vocal or instrumental). It is very coherent, having lots of facsimiles which can be transcribed. The transcriptions are offered at the appendix, so the reader may first try to transcribe the examples by himself. Generally, any musician with no great knowledge of theory can learn the musical notation of the past centuries using Apel's book. Recognized worldwide by musicologists.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Classic text that explains how to read and understand musical notation prior to 1600, November 14, 2005

By 

Craig Matteson (Saline, MI) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Notation of Polyphonic Music, 900-1600 (Hardcover)

It is essential to remember that our present musical notation is actually the product of a long process and has changed over time to suit the needs of the composers and musicians in performing the kinds of music they were interested in making. If you know how to read our present notation you can pretty much handle anything from the late seventeenth century until today. Although there are other things you need to know the further you head back and if you find experimental 20th century notations, you are pretty much on your own without specialized knowledge of what the experimenter was trying to do.

This book was written to teach its readers about various aspects of musical notation prior to the seventeenth century. There are no bar lines, the note heads are connected in ways that look strange to us, and they are not round. What is all this about? This notation suited the kind of music they were making quite well. However, like all systems, it was kept around a bit too long after music changed. Once it became too cumbersome, the system we now use was born in order to provide greater rhythmic clarity and harmonic complexity.

This book was first published in 1941 by the great Willi Apel. The fourth edition was in print by 1949. This shows you how active the field was in those days. Many editions were made of the old music in our present notation so it could be more easily performed by modern day musicians. However, I must tell you that our notation with bar lines does present problems. For example, we expect that the first beat in a measure, the downbeat, to have a certain rhythmic weight, or in the case of jazz and especially rock, the second beat, the backbeat. This is not the case for this old music. They did not think or hear or sing that way. So, it becomes a re-learning for musicians trying to read modern notation, but sing the music appropriately. Apel does a great job of explaining things in an understandable way. He also provides loads of musical examples. Some are even in color (note the chapter on mannered notation)!

This edition, the fifth, was published in 1961 and by then had become an interesting technical subject for specialists. Reading about notational systems is not necessarily an exciting read, but I think it is quite interesting and provides insights for anyone interested in mediaeval and renaissance music.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE BOOK on musical notation, June 18, 2003

By 

Juan Pablo Pira (Guatemala, Guatemala Guatemala) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Notation of Polyphonic Music, 900-1600 (Hardcover)

This is a very complete work. You get a very detailed description of every important notation system used from 900 to 1600. Even the slightly different systems, like Milán's vihuela tablature, are not just mentioned... they are discussed.
If you are interested in white notation, tablature (lute or keyboard), you need this book.