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There were many alternatives prior to the adoption of the music notation system we currently use. There have been many alternatives developed after the adoption
by taylodl 3y ago
There were many alternatives prior to the adoption of the music notation system we currently use. There have been many alternatives developed after the adoption of the music notation system we currently use. All these alternatives have one thing in common: they didn't work as well, let alone better, than the music notation system we currently use. It's not as though a lot of people haven't put a lot of effort into this for a very long time. What we have is simply the best system we've been able to devise.
- vintermann 3y agoThis is not how it worked at all. There were not competing systems, there were not proposals, there were only practices, and there was certainly not critical evaluation of what worked best. There was a ton of path dependence. We use notation for the same reason they use Chinese characters in China: partly for cultural prestige reasons, but primarily because it would be such a hassle to switch, with a billion people having invested so much in learning it and so much being written in it. (It's interesting that China should go the exact opposite way of cumbersome inherited complexity in their own music notation system, which as I've noted elsewhere is an undeniable pedagogic success but struggles to get accepted as more than a stepping stone to "real" notation)