Squiggles, squares, slashes, dots and dashes are what music is made of.
Well, kinda. If you have ever seen a Medieval music manuscript or sheet music, you understand the importance of images and their connection to sound. Iconography and notation connect music at the present to music yet to be made. Now, you can learn all about the history of notation for free, online, with two world-renowned musicologists from Switzerland.
The University of Basel, Switzerland was founded in 1460 and claims such notable alumni as Daniel and Johann Bernoulli, Carl Jung, and PaulyMeuller. Along with this prestigious lineage of minds, the university is home to a great sense of forward momentum in academia, notably, free education made accessible online.
Professors Angelika Moths and MatteoNanni are instructing a free, seven-week course, aptly named From Ink to Sound, which discusses the history and philology ( "the study of language in written historical sources") of music notation beginning with the earliest dots, lines, and squiggles of Medieval scribes and progressing to modern notation.
The course offers students the ability to converse and ask questions of the professors and their peers- many of whom are also musicologists and professors.
So, of course I joined.
Over the next seven weeks, I will be sharing my favorite parts of the course, and of course, whatever music I manage to write via quill and pen alike. Yes, students are actually encouraged to write with a quill; it's like Hogwarts for music nerds.
Please feel free to join the course and participate at your leisure, and more importantly, email me or comment below with any questions or comments! Here is the link to begin: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/from-ink-to-sound
For more information on notation and a fantastic book on the subject, check out this blog from our archives: http://wosu.org/2012/classical101-archive/everything-need-know-music-notation/