Norton Anthology Western Music Pdf

[Arnold Gilgen]

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Inspired by the success of the Open Goldberg project and the ongoing efforts to create MuseScore versions of the pieces in the various ABRSM syllabi, I have an idea for another project of larger scope.

The Norton Anthology of Western Music (NAWM) is a much-used resource in the academic world. It's a huge reference in several volumes containing representative scores, with analysis, covering the entire history of Western art music. It's an amazingly useful educational resource. Want to look at an Bach organ fugue? A Lasso motet? A Beethoven symphony? An act from an Verdi opera? A Stravinsky ballet? A Cage piece for prepared piano? Chances are, you can find them in the NAWM - meticulously accurate scores with expert analysis. Also, a companion set of CD's with professional recordings.

I want an "open" version of this. Not copying the same scores used by Norton - that would be illegal, anyhow - but creating our *own* representative anthology of scores. Only public domain sources, of course, but that still includes a huge amount of the kind of music we'd be interested it.

Of course, there are already a collection of free classical music out there - some on musescore.,com, some on Mutopia, as well as archives of mostly scanned music such as ISMLP, Project Gutenberg, etc - but I'm talking about something rather more organized and authoritative - "curated" would perhaps be the operative word. Part of what makes the NAWM so useful is the selection of scores themselves. Plus, actual MuseScore files rather than PDF to allow you to work with the scores, get playback, etc, also peer review to correct errors, provide commentary, etc. And ideally, professional recordings to use in the playback.

It's a gigantic undertaking, of course, but again - it can start small. Even a handful of well-picked scores done well would be hugely useful, and once the ball started rolling, I'll bet interested would develop and more contributors would come on board. Plus of course, it would really put MuseScore on the map.

This is the sort of thing I think musescore.com could organize via a group, It's also something one could pursue funding for, whether via Kickstarter as with Open Goldberg, or other grants. But I'm not really in a position to do that kind of organizing myself. So I though I'd toss up the idea here, see what anyone thinks.

BTW, when I mention the desire to "curate" the scores and have a representative collection, it helps to keep in mind that this doesn't preclude overr-representing some styles, genres, or composers. It's not like a printed collection where there is reward for keeping things as concise as possible (otherwise, the books would get too large and too expensive). On the other hand, a "curated" index of recommended scores, along with a collection of other scores in a similar format and up to the same standards, would be fine.

Hey Marc, your idea is exactly in line with what we had in mind for our next step after the Open Goldberg Variations project, which we named the Open Score project. From our lessons learned with Open Goldberg, we identified several challenges for the next step:

* A slogan: The open goldberg project liberated one piece only with the slogan: Setting Bach Free. This slogan really worked well and I'm sure if we didn't have it, the kickstarter wouldn't have been successful. As we are raising the bar now, with liberating more public domain scores, a new great slogan will be required.

* Being picky: for the goldberg variations, we picked a challenging score which required Werner to improve/developing MuseScore while he was transcribing it. Of course he can do so, but for non coders, it would be a pity to hit into an issue which prevents you of finishing a transcription. So the message is to start with easy scores.

* Collaborative transcribing: we added a feature on musescore.com to make comments on the actual score, which enables collaboration between the transcriber and reviewers. For collaboration between transcribers, we figured that other services would be handier, like dropbox, etc.

* Publishing: the Open Goldberg score resides in its own account but for the follow up project, we'd like to make a more open environment, call it a wiki environment. In there people can upload public domain sheet music (CC0), upload revisions and make the catalog stronger.

* Kickstarter: the open goldberg kickstarter worked out very well, because the message was brought across in a very professional way and because it resonated to a lot of different people. All credits for running the Kickstarter go to Robert Douglass, who did an amazing job promoting it. We managed to make this happen once, why not a second time indeed.

If this was to go ahead though, I think it would be better to wait until at least 3.0. Reasons include bug fixes, more features and improved presentation - it would appease any critics and create less work.

Thomas - thanks for your comments, and I'm glad to hear this meshes well with your thinking. I do agree that one should be careful not to tackle any scores that would be too difficult to create, and that it is best not to even try using 1.2 since so much is changing for 2.0. But I see no reason to assume 2.0 won't be stable and feature-rich to handle 90% of the scores we'd be wanting, and I also assume there won't be major changes in file format etc any time soon after 2.0. So chen, while I know you can be very particular about things and are thus finding too much not meeting your satisfaction, I'm actually quite pleased with where I see 2.0 being, and don't see it as being insufficient for most scores. Who knows how many people would be eager to start with 2.0 and how many would rather wait to participate, but I don't see a problem with earlier adopters getting started sooner. I kind of figure it will start slow and grow anyhow.

I am already starting to use it for serious (although not critical) work, and am currently holding off on the MuseScore Library project until it is released. This is mainly because of the features like ornament control and continuous view which will be coming with it.

I follow your reasoning Marc. There is no reason why the current state of MuseScore (i.e. 1.2) should block the start of the Open Score project. After all, we don't consider MuseScore nightly to be stable enough yet for a beta release. As of the beta release, our current plan would be also to support musescore 2.0 score upload on musescore.com. Currently we only support 1.2 or older.

2.0 will be a big release, but I think we should be careful not to become impulsive to carry out tasks. Problems are likely to still exist, with some possibly detrimental (e.g. those discerning in notation could be deterred) - we won't have certain features either (see this about improved automatic placement of score elements). I'm also wary about certain manual controls and workarounds - it could cause problems later, or with compatibility.

What better way to inspire development than to push the limits and try? You can do a lot in 1.2 already (if you know the tricks), 2.0 should be that much better judging from the improvements The Open Goldberg project required (and a whole lot more). I say go for it! This project will certainly identify improvements and then we'll see what 2.1 and 2.2 bring out.

I would agree about using it to improve MuseScore, but I'm cautious about the presenting of it until there is consensus, particularly from experts - especially after seeing feedback about the Open Goldbergs.

Valid arguments Scott. You could see it perhaps in phases, just like any editing process goes. Basically, anyone can help making a transcription, but the final stamp of quality can only appear after someone with authority has reviewed the score. And here is where the Kickstarter can come in place. It could fund the time of typesetting experts to finish a score. That final phase could be done later, but we can start already making a body of works even in 1.2, not claiming it's the highest quality of in the industry, but at least the scores are open and available to anyone.

I looked at a whole bunch of the examples from that critique of MuseScore, and as far as I can tell, most are criticisms of the engraving decisions made, not anything the software itself is doing wrong. The very few comments that turned out to represent bugs in the software have already been fixed. And somehow, it seems quite unfair to judge 2.0 too harshly with respect to bugs when it is still *months* away from any sort of release.

So while those were interesting and valid (if someowhat subjective) critiques of one particular score created by one particular engraver using 2.0, but I don't see how one can possibly see it as an indictment fo the software itself. Unless you believe the software should just automatically do everything perfectly, with no manual adjustments of any kind ever needed. That's a nice pipe dream, and I suppose Lilypond tries to chase it with varying degrees of success, but in the world of WYSIWYG notation software, it's just expected that you'll need to adjust some things manually. Which is to say, it's highly unlikely Finale or Sibelius would have done significantly better out of the box (Sibelius' "magnetic layout" feature notwithstanding). People accustomed to producing manuscript for publication using notation software expect to need to make some adjustments, and as someone who has done this using both Finale and MuseScore, I really no evidence whatsoever that MuseScore is not up to the task for most scores. There are a couple of existing bugs that I hope and expect to see fixed - handling of collisipns of second in multivoice context, etc. But they'll be more likely to be fixed for 2.0 if we start actually pushing on things harder. And even if they don't all get fixed (and it's practically a given than any release of any software still has *some* bugs), I and others have become pret adept at the workarounds.

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