The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #151012 Message #3523242
Posted By: Jack Campin
05-Jun-13 - 08:10 PM
Thread Name: Minor key signatures are wrong
Subject: RE: Minor key signatures are wrong
Staff notation was invented for singers, not keyboard players. The first staff notation for voices predates the first written keyboard music by about 300 years.
Textual/numeric notations predate staff notation, have the same expressiveness, and are still in use. Ancient Greek notation has evolved into Byzantine chant notation (maybe the most legible musical notation of all time); sol-fa is still used and has given rise to jianpu, the major notation system used in China; most people here know what you can do with ABC. Staff notation has the advantage of familiarity to us today, but it would never have evolved if the Western chant community had known what you could do with the Greek/Arabic notation system current in their own time in Muslim and Orthodox Europe.