Behind bars vs Music notation for the 20 centuries.

Hello everyone!

Time for hot debate. 

Which book do you use a reference when use check your engraving? 

Behind bars or Stone's

and why?

Never use or heard of these 2 books so no debate lol!

I also must admit that I’ve never read or heard about those two books. However, score engraving is an interesting topic for me and I take a lot of care to produce satisfying scores for my compositions. Therefore, that „debate“ should be something for me, too.

The only „literature“ I’ve actually read about the art of music score engraving is the „Lilypond Essay“ which I’ve linked here.

Even if I run the risk of @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu is thinking that I am a Lilypond lobbyist or salesman (😆, I must think on the „rodeo“ between Henry and @SeekJohn14v6 ...), I am just a Lilypond user, and I’m glad with this notation software for two reasons. First, the approach of writing „source code“ and „compiling“ it into a score and a MIDI-file is the right one for me, since in my everyday work I'm familiar with writing tons of lines of source code rather than using a WYSIWYG-interface. The other, and possibly more important fact is, that the resulting engravings are much more satisfying and similar to old-fashioned hand engravings than the most of the other notation software solutions are currently able to produce.

So I had a small look again at the above cited „Lilypond Essay“ and, interestingly, the two books you mentioned can be found prominently in the „(Short) Literature List“. I looked around, if I could find some PDFs, excerpts etc. on the internet – and indeed I found some, so that I can take a view on that books to be able to participate in the „debate“ soon.

Thanks for the suggestion!

39 minutes ago, Wieland Handke said:

The only „literature“ I’ve actually read about the art of music score engraving is the „Lilypond Essay“ which I’ve linked here.

This looks quite useful and interesting! I have to admit, I don't pay special emphasis on musical engraving at all because I never consider an essential part of composing at all.

Henry

Until I switched to Dorico from Finale over a year ago, I had never heard of Elaine Gould or her book. I do have a PDF of it and it’s certainly interesting, but as with any manual that purports to provide rules, I’m not going to agree with all of it or even most of it. Notation is a very personal thing, and when you consider the scores notated by folks like Feldman or Shapey and many others, there are many “rules” that get broken all the time, yet the music does manage to get performed, and generally performed very well.