Re: Idle curiousity about ancient Lily-lore (fwd)

[Martin Tarenskeen]

On Sat, 9 Mar 2013, Jim Long wrote:

> Just curious, how did the absolute notation system come about?
>
> My main observations are that it is piano-centric, with
> { c d e f g a b c' } being an intuitive sequence, while { a b c d
> e f g a' } is less logical.   Mmm, well, maybe that's not
> piano-centric, that's just music theory, C is the only (major)
> scale without sharps or flats.

It's the naming of notes and octaves like I have always learnt them in music 
theory lessons, long before I even heard of Lilypond.

I don't know the international or english terms but this is what I learnt in 
Dutch:

C, ~ B, contra octaaf (lilypond c,, ~ b,,)
C ~ B groot octaaf (lilypond: c, ~ b,)
c ~ b klein octaaf
c' ~ b' eengestreept octaaf
c'' ~ b'' tweegestreept octaaf

My guess is Han-Wen Nienhuys and Jan Nieuwennhuizen were inspired by the 
existing traditional music theory books, but without using uppercase to make 
parsing by the computer easier. And dutch is the default lilypond language.

--

MT