Schools used to spend a lot of time on penmanship. I visited a high school where they had a wall of notes left by each senior class. In the notes from the 1950s the writing was quite refined and looked very practiced, and notes left by kids in the 2020s looked like 2nd grade printing by comparison. I don't think cursive handwriting is really even taught/required anymore.
I can imagine that in the time of Bach or Mozart that writing was a big point of emphasis in schools.
Wow. Can we even be sure we're listening to the right thing? Is it actually possible to read this unambiguously or is there an element of context when reading music, similar to how if you're reading prose the next word is probably grammatically correct and makes sense?
The publisher was generally familiar with Beethoven’s writing and conventions. He’d prepare galleys that Beethoven would proof (and frequently edit). A substantial part of Beethoven’s known correspondence concerns corrections to galleys (and managing payments).
Schools used to spend a lot of time on penmanship. I visited a high school where they had a wall of notes left by each senior class. In the notes from the 1950s the writing was quite refined and looked very practiced, and notes left by kids in the 2020s looked like 2nd grade printing by comparison. I don't think cursive handwriting is really even taught/required anymore.
I can imagine that in the time of Bach or Mozart that writing was a big point of emphasis in schools.
They spent more time in penmanship class than an individual grad student spent learning LaTeX in the pre-LLM time, for reference/scale.
Beethoven certainly wasn't.
You've named one composer who is. I don't see where the inductive step applies.
The composers who didn't have neat handwriting are forgotten today because nobody could read their (musical) notes...
This is simply not true. Look at Beethoven's manuscripts for instance.
https://guides.loc.gov/beethoven/manuscripts
That's one of the reasons why he spent several years to write a single symphony.
Wow. Can we even be sure we're listening to the right thing? Is it actually possible to read this unambiguously or is there an element of context when reading music, similar to how if you're reading prose the next word is probably grammatically correct and makes sense?
The publisher was generally familiar with Beethoven’s writing and conventions. He’d prepare galleys that Beethoven would proof (and frequently edit). A substantial part of Beethoven’s known correspondence concerns corrections to galleys (and managing payments).
Exactly. The context makes it all pretty clear. Music has its own grammar, and particularly music of the common practice era from about 1650-1930.
You can check all this out for yourself at IMSL. Tons of holograph copies there for lots of composers. https://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page
I see you've never worked your way through a manuscript by Donizetti.