Customer Reviews

The Story of Noah

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Back in the '80s, when I had to write a college term paper about the history of musical notation, one had to search high and low to find a book that devoted to this question the attention it deserves. True, Willi Apel's "Notation of Polyphonic Music" has been around for eons, but it doesn't come close to Williams's effort. Williams has striven to produce a thoughtful, balanced survey that reaches back to the Egyptian, Babylonian, and ancient Greek roots of the "Western" musical tradition and has traced its notational aspects through the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, up to the near-present (n.b., the book was published in 1903). The work brims with useful illustrations, though, frankly, I could use without the miscellaneous photos of this church or that abbey. Naturally, recent notational developments are not covered. Fortunately for you, dear reader, I wrote a follow-up paper on 20th century developments in musical notation, and a work by Karkoschka was my "bible" just as Williams was for its predecessor. Fair warning: Williams's opus is not for the musically inept; he demands you have a strong understanding of intervals, rests, chordal structures and relationships, and such other basic musicological constructs.