Leonardo Digital Reviews
 LDR Home  Index/Search  Leonardo On-Line  About Leonardo  Whats New








Reviewer biography

Current Reviews

Review Articles

Book Reviews Archive

The Virtual Score: Representation, Retrieval, Restoration; Computing in Musicology 12

Walter B. Hewlett and Eleanor Selfridge-Field, eds. MIT Press, Cambridge,
MA, U.S.A., 2002. 291 pp., illus. Paper. $28.00
ISBN: 0-262-58209-0.

Reviewed by Richard Kade
Ubiquitous Iconoclast
Palo Alto, CA 94304-1346 USA
ubiq_icon@hotmail.com
Phone: (650) 813-7672

The twelfth and newest installment in the series of "Computing in Musicology" from Stanford University's Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities shows, amongst other things, how wrong Longfellow's notion of music as the "universal language of the arts" was. Setting aside the historical underpinnings of the poet's misconception -- dating back at least to Pythagoras and his "Music of the Spheres" -- "The Virtual Score" provides a plethora of programming solutions spanning "Representation, Retrieval and Restoration" from Medieval repertoire through GUIDO music-notation format to Extensible Markup Language (XML). Two fascinating articles deal with the production of Braille musical scores. The first, by a trio of French collaborators, centers on issues of practicality whereas the second, by Silas S. Brown at Cambridge (UK),
explores the broader implications of data representation and conversion. These are roughly analogous to much of the spectral array illuminated by Douglas Hofsteadter's "Le Ton beau de Marot" -- covered in this space (or sector of "cyberia") in 1998.

This volume is masterfully edited so that the reader need not be fully conversant in the technical details of the programming languages discussed. The articles are organized in a way that leads to ever-increasing understanding of the broader issues at stake. (Abstracts of each article and related links are posted at www.ccarh.org/publications/cm/12 .) The most surprising thing about this collection of articles is, paradoxically, unintended. The discourse on musical syntax and the like underscore the most basic truism. Music always is an attempt at conveying abstract expression. Accordingly, the notation involved -- centuries ago or into the future -- inevitably involve pragmatic compromises. Thus the creative process of the composer is far more like that of the poet than of the painter or sculptor. Form follows function. David Esterly's brilliant book on Grinling Gibbons put the entire process of creation best when he said that one "begins as a god but ends as a slave."

top







Updated 1st September 2003


Contact LDR: ldr@leonardo.org

Contact Leonardo: isast@leonardo.info


copyright © 2003 ISAST