musical notation

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Key signatures for 16 major and minor keys.

Music notation: system for indicating stress, linking successive notes together by beaming, or stroking.

Music notation: modern relationship of 2 to 1 between adjacent note values, with the dot adding an extra half value to give a 3 to 1 relationship.

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musical notation summary

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Arts & Culture

musical notation

Written by Ian D. Bent

Fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Article History

musical notation; sheet music

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Category: Arts & Culture

Key People:: Henri Pousseur; Julián Carrillo; Samuel Scheidt; Guido d’Arezzo; Philippe de Vitry

Related Topics:: score; tablature; solmization; G; F

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musical notation, visual record of heard or imagined musical sound, or a set of visual instructions for performance of music. It usually takes written or printed form and is a conscious, comparatively laborious process. Its use is occasioned by one of two motives: as an aid to memory or as communication. By extension of the former, it helps the shaping of a composition to a level of sophistication that is impossible in a purely oral tradition. By extension of the latter, it serves as a means of preserving music (although incompletely and imperfectly) over long periods of time, facilitates performance ...(100 of 4663 words)

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