How to Write Music Part 1

How to Write Music.

by Clement A. Harris.

Introductory.

1.--It is reasonable to expect that a musician shall be at least an accurate and legible writer as well as a reader of the language of his Art. The immense increase in the amount of music published, and its cheapness, seem rather to have increased than decreased this necessity, for they have vastly multiplied activity in the Art. If they have not intensified the necessity for music-writing, they have increased the number of those by whom the necessity is felt.

Intelligent knowledge of Notation is the more necessary inasmuch as music-writing is in only a comparatively few cases mere copying. Even when writing from a copy, some alteration is frequently necessary, as will be shown in the following pages, requiring independent knowledge of the subject on the part of the copyist. (See _e.g._, par. 28.)

Yet many musicians, thoroughly competent as performers, cannot write a measure of music without bringing a smile to the lips of the initiated.

Many performers will play or sing a note at sight without hesitation, which, asked to write, they will first falter over and then bungle--at least by writing it at the wrong octave.

The admirable working of theoretical examination papers is sometimes in ridiculous contrast with the puerility of the writing.

Psychologists would probably say that this was because conceptual action is a higher mental function than perceptual: in other words, that recollection is harder than recognition.

The remedy is simple. Recognition must be developed till it becomes recollection: the writing of music must be taught concurrently with the reading of it.

This was once the case: music-writing was a necessary part of a musician's education. One may be the more surprised at its falling into disuse, inasmuch as phonography--in the musical sense--is a distinctly pleasant occupation. Without being either drawing or writing, it partakes of the nature of both.

But many points in the writing of music are not now considered to form part of the Rudiments of Music, and are not included in primers on the subject.

Hence the following pages.

While containing some matter which may have escaped the attention of more advanced musicians, they should, in an educational course, either be used along with a Primer on the Elements, or immediately follow it.

Choice of Paper.

2.--The first matter to claim attention in making a ma.n.u.script copy of music is choice of the right kind of music-paper. This will primarily be determined by the number of staves each score requires. Most paper contains twelve staves to the page. This is a most convenient number, allowing for a two-, three-, four-, or six-stave score.

Song-paper: three-stave score, two staves being braced for the piano part, with a third for the voice part. This latter is at a considerable distance above the other staves, to allow room for writing in the words.

Organ-music paper: three-stave score, two staves braced for manual part, and another underneath for pedal part.

Quartet-paper: four-stave score, no brackets or clefs.

Quartet-paper with accompaniment: six-stave score, two bracketed for piano part.

Full-score paper: much smaller than short-score staves. Very useful for other purposes where a small, narrow stave is required.

For piano and violin music, paper should be chosen the staves of which are wide apart, to allow of the large number of leger lines frequently required.

Scoring.

3.--The paper chosen, the first use of a pen will be in ruling the score-lines. A "score" technically is as many staves as are _performed simultaneously_: two in pianoforte music, three in organ music, four in an unaccompanied quartet, six in four-part vocal music with piano accompaniment, and so on. These staves have a line drawn down their left-hand edge. Hence the name, from their being _scored_ through.

Their position always being at the left-hand edge of the staves, and their length determined by the number of staves, they may be drawn before the length of the measures has been arranged.

Care must be taken when a page is ruled at a time not to draw the score-line through more than the necessary number of staves. Except in a full score there will generally be at least two, and, of course, very often more, scores to the page.

Barring.

4.--After the score-lines come the bar-lines. And with the arranging of these begins that _careful mapping-out_ of the whole work, neglect of which will lead to endless annoyance and dissatisfaction.

Some music is so uniform that a given s.p.a.ce may be a.s.signed to each measure, and consequently a uniform number of measures to each score, provided that there is no change of key or time. In determining this s.p.a.ce allowance must be made (1) in the first measure of each movement for the key and time signatures, which may require a considerable s.p.a.ce; (2) in the first measure of each score for the _key_ signature: the time signature is only repeated at the beginning of each movement or when the time is changed; (3) regard must be had to where a turn-over will come, some pa.s.sages allowing of this so much more easily than others; (4) also to the number of measures in the entire movement, otherwise a new page may have to be added for only one measure! (5) in vocal music careful regard must be paid to the words as well as the notes. A syllable will often require more s.p.a.ce than a note, consequently in very simple music the words require more s.p.a.ce than the music. In florid compositions a syllable, on the other hand, is often sung, not to several notes merely, but to several measures, and the music requires much more s.p.a.ce than the words. In the former case the author has found it a good plan to write the words first, or at least a measure or two of them, as a guide in estimating their average length. But, while the words must not be cramped, they must fall under the notes to which they are to be sung, and as these notes must occupy as nearly as possible their proportionate part of the measure, the skilful scribe will keep both words and music in mind simultaneously. Where, however, in vocal or instrumental music the measures vary greatly, one having, perhaps, a single whole note and the next thirty-two thirty-second notes, it is necessary to plan each score separately, or the end may be reached with too much s.p.a.ce for the last measure, but not enough for another one. Carrying a measure from the end of one score to the beginning of the next is not practised now, as it once was.

Bar-lines are usually drawn through each stave of vocal music separately, and in instrumental music through as many staves as belong to the same instrument or group of instruments, _e.g._, through the two staves of a piano part, and the four or five belonging to the "strings"

in a full score. These instrumental staves are also usually connected by a brace at the left-hand edge of each score thus:

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 1.]

Uniform bar-lines may be ruled a page at a time, if care be taken not to make the line continuous through more than the required number of staves. It is a fault which one commits the moment watchfulness is relaxed, and entails much scratching out. Where the measures vary in length the ruling will most readily be done in light pencil with a T square, and afterwards inked. A single bar-line out of the perpendicular will spoil the appearance of a whole page.

Clefs.

5.--The first actual musical characters to be written are the clefs.

Misconception of the function of these is so common, not among practical musicians only, but on the part of elementary theorists, that a few words of explanation are necessary. The commonest fallacies are to suppose that if clefs are the right shape their exact position on the stave does not matter, and that their position varies. Both suppositions are, to quote a delightful Ruskinism, "accurately false." A clef identifies and originally was used with _a single line_, and identifies others only by their relations.h.i.+p to this. Hence its precise shape is of less importance than its being on the right line. Indeed, the shape of clefs has varied so much that many able practical musicians do not know that they were originally simple letters, the treble clef a small "g,"

the ba.s.s clef a small "f." From this beginning has been evolved so elaborate a sign, sometimes not merely covering all the lines of a stave, but going beyond them, that it is necessary to explain which line a clef is on. Thus the "G," or treble clef, is on that line which its interior termination is on, and which it curls round, touching it in all _four times_. The upper part of the treble clef is sometimes kept within the stave, but, as in the present examples, more often rises above the stave. The point is merely a matter of taste.

The C clef is on that line which has an oblique or straight stroke, or pot-hook, above and below.

The F clef is on that line which its interior termination is on, and which it curls round either to the right or the left, and which has a dot above and below.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 2.]

And this position never varies. Whatever line the F clef is on is F, however many or few lines may be above or below it.

In olden days any clef line might be taken with any number of lines above and below. For instance, the F line with two lines below and two above; or three below and one above. This is not now done with treble and ba.s.s clefs, which are only used with respectively the top and bottom five lines of the Great Stave of eleven lines. Hence care must be taken to write the treble clef on the _second_, and the ba.s.s clef on the _fourth_ line of its stave. But it is still customary to use the C clef, especially in viola and trombone music, with both two lines above and two below, making the alto stave; and three below and one above, making the tenor stave. These staves are also used in old vocal music, and familiarity with them is absolutely necessary in all advanced theoretical examinations. The C clef, therefore, _appears_ to move, being sometimes on the third and sometimes on the fourth line. Really it is always on the same line, and it is the _selection of lines_ which varies. Hence the misdescription of the treble and ba.s.s clefs as "immovable," the C clef as "movable."

Note that all clefs are on lines; no clef is in a s.p.a.ce. This is because the first attempt to accurately represent music to the eye was by means of a single line with a letter at the beginning. This was what has since become the fourth line, the clef line, of the ba.s.s stave.

In pianoforte and organ music, high parts for the left hand, or low ones for the right, may be written either:

By means of leger lines (Fig. 3, a);

By changing the clef (b); or

By writing the part in the stave proper to the other hand (c).