Association for Research intoan Alternative and Universal

Music Notation

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ABC MUSIC NOTATIONAlbert Brennink

Ailler-Brennink Chromatic Notation

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Our music has developed from the Middle Ages to the 21st century in giant steps. It is the deve-lopment from the church modes of the Gregorian Chant to more modern modes and atonality, or from seven notes to twelve notes in the octave. Our mu-sic notation is still lagging slightly behind this rapid development. Therefore the ARAUMUS Associati-on has set itself the task of finding or developing an alternative notation for more modern music. To this end, the already known proposals for alternative notations will first be tested. Secondly, after an evaluation, the best notations will be compared. And thirdly, one dodecaphonic music notation will be provided for future use as an alternative to traditional notation.

Research into the history of European music notation has long since been accomplished. Therefore in this review we will only go back as far as attempts at alternative notations have been published. Through the centuries music notation has developed in both theory and practical use, not only positively but, unfortunately, also negatively. Therefore it is not surprising that active musicians suggested improvements as early as the eighteenth century.

The system of a horizontal staff of four lines with the note symbols, called neumes, developed during the late Middle Ages and worked well for the church modes that were used in Gregorian Chants. It is based on the system of a graph, in which pitch is shown on the vertical and duration on the hori-zontal extension.

In the church modes the octave had only seven notes and organs had only the white keys on the keyboard. In this article we cannot pursue the whys and wherefores of musical developments. But four hundred years later we have 12 notes in the octave

and there are five new black keys on the organ keyboard. Yet there have been no great changes to the essence of notation; a fifth line was added to the staff and the accidentals were invented for the black keys on the keyboard.

It seems to have taken a long time for the world of music to realize that this is a poor, makeshift soluti-on. After all, musical performances were becoming more and more magnificent. Today, however, after having advanced from diatonic to atonal music, and since pianos and organs are tuned not only to be well-tempered, but also to be in equal temperament, we have come to the point where a new dodecapho-nic or twelve-tone notation is urgently needed.

The notation proposals primarily target the repre-sentation of the black keys on the keyboard. What we need is a notational system in which there is a fixed place for every one of the 12 notes of the octave, i.e. a staff system for the chromatic scale.

With note symbols moving from a line into a space between two lines, we will need six lines and six spaces for 12 notes. The result is a staff with six lines. However, this is not enough, because music can move further, maybe to the next octave and on the grand piano keyboard there are up to seven octaves. This example already shows how compli-cated music can be.

The first known musician to publish an alternative notation with a staff and note symbols was Roualle de Boisgelou in 1764 in Paris. He used a staff with seven lines. We will not go into more detail here. It is sufficient to know that mainly during the 19th and 20th century new proposals were made continuously. In 1985, an association was founded in the USA* to conduct research into this particular subject and in 1997 a Directory of Notation Pro-

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posals was published with 548 notation proposals. This number indicates the importance of searching for a better solution.

Fortunately, there have always been committed individuals who have carried out intensive research work in this field on their own initiative. However, so far the official world of music has not heeded the current situation. And the music publishers are guarding their storerooms filled with music books, as if someone was planning to commit burglary.

One pioneer of a new world, Arnold Schoenberg, showed the way when he said and wrote that in the same way as in his time children had to learn two alphabets, the German and the Latin handwriting, similarly in future musicians would have to learn two music notations. In view of the efforts of many individuals with a similar vision who have invented new notations, these ideas should no longer simply be rejected. Instead it is necessary to cooperate to find a satisfactory solution.

Here we would like to point out that the new music notation was initially developed for the age of the dodecaphonic scale, the equal temperament 12-tone scale. We should also remember that in China, for example, the temple bells represent exactly this scale. The application of the two whole-tone scales Feng and Huang, which when played alternately result in the 12-tone scale also originated in China. This is also known as the semi-tone scale. The chromatic scale, which was introduced into Europe-an music in the nineteenth century (Wagner), appa-rently already existed in other parts of the globe in prehistoric times. Therefore it is possible to speak

of a new global or universal music notation.If it becomes obvious in future that music of earlier centuries can be played from sight more easily when it is printed in the new notation – and not only by beginners, but also by more advanced musicians – some music publishers might enter the scene and start publishing new editions of master-pieces from the early times of equal temperament to modern times. We are convinced that with this initiative we are providing a valuable service to the world of music and we hope that future generations will be able to benefit from the advantages of the new music notation.

Time has not stood still over the last fifty years and today we are able to offer alternative music nota-tions as complete ready-to-use systems. As a first new notational system we present here the ABC Notation by Albert Brennink. After thirty years in Canada, the author has returned to Europe and is a member of our Association.

* Music Notation Modernization AssociationP.O. Box 241, Kirksville, Missouri, 63501 USA

* engl.: staff, staves = Liniensystem

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After 40 years of intensive research work and more than 30 publications, the ABC Notation is a complete notational system. The existence of 20 music books printed in chromatic notation provides sufficient proof of its usefulness. Following a review of the historical developments, we will give an introduction to the main characteristics of this notation as well as a complete list of publications.

Albert Brennink, an architect by profession, has occupied himself with music since childhood; his instruments are piano and harpsichord plus organ and voice. Early on he became irritated by the inadequacy of our traditional music notation and experimented with alternative solutions, trying the keyboard notation Klavarskribo, published in 1931, for instance. **

However, as a result of these early experiments he came to the conclusion that we need a notation based on the chromatic scale which shows pitch in exact proportion. After more research work and some discarded experiments, his efforts finally re-sulted in the complete system of his ABC Notation.

In 1975 his system was ready for printing. He visi-ted 12 music publishers in person and all of them turned his booklet down. Therefore he saw himself compelled to start his own music publishing company. In 1976 the EDITION CHROMA was founded in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany (as a branch of dipa-Verlag + Druck GmbH). The book-let with only 26 pages appeared in print for the first time in 1976: Albert Brennink Die Halbtonschrift oder Die chromatische Notation, eine graphische Darstellung der Musik. The booklet was printed in a two column layout, showing German and English

Albert Brennink ABC MUSIC NOTATION

Ailler-Brennink Chromatic Notation *

side by side; the English title was The Chromatic Notation, a Graphical Representation of Music.

In the following year, a charitable non-profit foun-dation for the reform of music notation, 'Fondation Chroma', was founded in Montreux, Switzerland, the author's residence, and the publishing company moved from Frankfurt to Montreux VD, Switzer-land. In 1978 the French and Italian version of the booklet was also published: La Notation Chroma-tique, l'écriture par demi-tons, une representation graphique de la musique and La Notazione Croma-tica, una rappresentazione grafica della musica.

Accompanying the first booklet, in 1976, the first three Contrapuncti of J.S. Bach's The Art of Fugue were also published in Chromatic Notation as an example of more complicated music.

A press conference was organized at the Frank-furt Book Fair and a review by the notation expert Karkoschka appeared in the Swiss music magazine Schweizerische Musikzeitschrift. But there was little reaction. However, one remark in Karkoschka's review struck the author: “Once more, one of around 50 new notational proposals.” If there were already so many proposals, what did they look like?

To obtain more information Brennink organized an international enquiry for new notations, starting with music magazines in Europe. After emigrating to Canada in 1979, he did the same in North and South America and overseas. In 1983 the results were published simultaneously by 'Fondation Chro-ma' in Montreux VD, Switzerland (the German version) and by 'Chroma Foundation' in Victoria

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BC, Canada (the English version) under the title: Chromatic Notation, the Results and Conclusions of the International Enquiry by the Chroma Foun-dation.

The international enquiry brought more than 100 proposals for alternative notations. Many of these concerned improvements to the traditional notation, for instance by marking the note heads instead of having accidentals. Others showed new instrument notations for the strings of a guitar or for the keys of a piano. We have only collected notations that show the chromatic scale with exact equivalency of the note steps. Here we have to distinguish between two kinds: firstly, the graphical representation of half steps and, secondly, the graphical representati-on of whole steps.

The difference is that with a half-step graph each half step moves up or down; while with a whole-step graph only the whole steps move up or down; every second half step, however, stays on the same line and a different note head shows the half-step move. These whole-step notations do not fulfil our first criteria and are not dealt with in detail.

The final result showed 24 half-step notations and eight whole-step notations. The half-step notations then went through a further evaluation, for which the staff system became the main criterion. As a final result, two staff systems of four-line staves plus two ledger lines for each octave seemed to be the best solution, the systems published by Albert Brennink in 1976 and by Franz Grassel in 1983.

To demonstrate the usefulness of the ABC Notati-on, Brennink had planned to show piano pieces by Arnold Schoenberg and contacted the Schoenberg Foundation in Los Angeles. The author's son Law-rence Schoenberg gladly gave his permission, but the publishers, who had the first rights to publish,

refused. As the 70-year waiting period after the author's death had not yet elapsed, Brennink deci-ded to create his own dodecaphonic music.While the international enquiry was still running, he published the composition Blütezeit or Blossom Time. He composed a cycle of songs based on his own lyrics in the form of a cycle of sonnets. As the musical basis he used the two whole-tone scales and in this way new music, real six-tone music developed. Thus in 1983 the first musical compo-sition in ABC Notation was published: Blossom Time, A Cycle of Songs for Voice and Piano. The book contains 22 songs; all lyrics are in German and English, translated by Alex Page, Amhurst, Massachusets, USA.

The first performance by Michael Kreikenbaum, baritone, and Joachim Hess, piano, took place on 3 November 1986 at the Kurtheater Bad Homburg. The musicians played according to the ABC Nota-tion. A second performance took place on 27 April 1988 at the School of Music in Cologne (Musik-hochschule Köln), and a third one on 18 August 1988 at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, in connection with an international conference of the Music Notation Modernization Association, MNMA. Up to now the Blossom Time song cycle has been performed 12 times.

The abbreviation MNMA brings us onto a new subject. The international enquiry set a ball rolling which is still rolling today: the idea of improving music notation. Musicians who were discontent with the old notation suddenly had a contact point and were able to find like-minded individuals.

In this way, on 29 June 1983 Thomas S. Reed with his wife Mabel and two children came from Kirksville in Missouri, USA, and arrived on Van-couver Island in Canada to meet the organizer of the international enquiry. From the first meeting on,

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a friendly cooperation developed. It was possible to make great progress in the research activities because Tom Reed had already gathered around him a circle of notation specialists and had been sending out his 6–6 Newsletter for many years.

After the first contact and further consultations, the idea of organizing an association for alternative notation research arose and Tom Reed took on the task of heading up this organization. In 1985 in Kirksville, Missouri, USA, the Music Notation Modernization Association, MNMA, a charitable (non-profit) organization, was founded. The mem-bers were amateur and professional musicians, teachers, composers and other notation inventors. At its peak the association had 130 members in 17 different countries.

Independently of this organization, in 1987 Gardner Read published a Source Book of Proposed Music Notation Reform at Greenwood Press Inc. with 99 notation proposals. Within this list, alongside Brennink's notation, there is another notation with four line staves per octave; it was published in 1904 by Johann Ailler in Stetteldorf am Wagram (Austria). Since this discovery Albert Brennink's notation has been called the Ailler-Brennink Chro-matic Notation.

Meanwhile Brennink's research work continued and, after improving some details, he was able to present his ABC Notation as a final edition. In 1992 the English version Equal Temperament Music Notation, The Ailler-Brennink Chromatic Notation, results and conclusions of music notation reform by the Chroma Foundation was published; and in the same year the German version Wohltemperierte Notenschrift also appeared.

In this book 56 chromatic notations are examined and as a final result the ABC Notation, with all its

characteristic details, is presented. In a later chapter musical examples are compared in the old and new notation, and finally whole-page music pieces are shown in the new notation. In 1994, the French and the Chinese versions were published and became the standard work in the field of music notation research.

While this publication opened the doorway to a new era of music representation, the year 1993, with the computer program NoteWriter and its ad-aptation for the ABC Notation brought material and tools for building a new world of music books. As well as publishing his own compositions, Brennink also edited and published 20 music books from Bach to Debussy, including such comprehensive titles as J. S. Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier, I and II with 48 preludes and fugues. He proved that the ABC Notation is not only easy to read and clear and instructive for theory studies such as voice leading, but can also become a visual, aesthetical pleasure due to its simple graphical representation.

In 2001 Brennink also published a Tutorial for piano and organ playing according to chromatic notation, with the co-operation of Joachim Hess, pianist, and Carsten Lenz, organist, volume I. In this book, the ABC Notation is explained in detail. In the part for beginners, the first exercises are not on the keys C, D, E, but on the black keys F-sharp, G-sharp, A-sharp, because this is the most obvious group of keys on the keyboard and easiest to recognize. The notes have the names of the system 'do-re-mi' with new names for the black keys. The book is for beginners, not for small children.

After having published his book on architecture Structural Architecture (later also in German), Brennink created his last music book in 2009: J. S. Bach The Art of Fugue in Proportional Music Notation. Instead of using the term 'ABC Notation',

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** Klavarskribo, P.O.Box 39, NL-2980 AA Ridder-kerk, Netherlands

the author writes 'proportional notation', because proportional representation of pitch is the main element of his notation. An introduction in German and English begins with the words: “Make structure visible and make it pleasing the eye”. These words originate from his architectural philosophy, but are equally valid for music.

* The system of ABC-notaion is available for common use. In case of public application the authorship is to be mentioned: "Music notation by Albert Brennink".

The system of ABC Notation is shown here with a few examples. The two main advantages compared to traditional notation are:

1. Instead of five traditional clefs, there is just one clef, the ABC Grand Staff.2. There are no accidentals, because the staff is based on the chromatic scale.

The ABC Notation is built on the system of a graph, where pitch is shown on the vertical and duration on the horizontal extension.

Example 1: System of a graph The ABC Grand Staff is a continuous octave scale. An octave is the eighth note of a diatonic scale (let us say C major); physically it is double the note's frequency (for instance the distance of the note a' = 440 frequency to a" = 880 frequency). In the grand staff the octaves are numbered 1 to 7 from bottom to top. As music usually develops around the middle octave, a special frame marks the middle octave no. 4.

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System of ABC Notation

Example 2: The ABC-grand staff

The chromatic scale, on which our system is based, has 12 notes in the octave. To represent these 12 steps, we need six lines and six spaces. With two octaves and 12 lines the situation is made readable by the omission of two lines in each six line staff and by putting notes in the now wider space on two ledger lines. Thus we have a four-line staff with two ledger lines for each octave. For clarity and ease of reading both of these two ledger lines have to be printed.

Example 3: The four-line staff for one octave

The four-line staff for two octaves

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If in the course of the piece an octave extension is needed, another four-line staff can be added to the system.

Example 4: Staff extension

If there is not enough space for extending the staff system, the new octave number is framed and printed into the existing staff.

Example 5: Staves with octave numbers

In the ABC Notation the note C is always on the top line of the four-line staff. Thereby the chroma-tic scale follows as pictured in Example 6. The note A is situated in the middle space of the four-line staff.

Für Musiker, die gerne auf die Tasten der Klaviatur schauen, wenn sie an Musik denken, ist die Erken-For musicians who like to look at a keyboard when thinking of music, recognition is made easy: the bunch of three black keys on the keyboard, with the note F-sharp on the left or as the first key, matches the four-line staff with F-sharp on the bottom or first line.

As the scope of the human voice does not reach far over two octaves, we need only one or two staves to notate music for the human voice. The same is true for most of the orchestra instruments. For organ and harpsichord we need four staves and for the grand piano it can go up to seven staves. However, this practically never happens because it is very rare to play on the lowest and the highest octave at the same time. In principle, only staves where there are notes should be printed.

Example 6: Note names

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Example 7: Notes and rests One important detail of the ABC Notation should be singled out: the new application of the note stem. Contrary to traditional notation where the note stem is only used up to the right and down to the left, in the ABC Notation the stem can also be used up to the left and down to the right. In piano music we make use of this possibility in two diffe-rent ways.

As we have only one clef – there is no F-clef for the left hand and G-clef for the right hand – we use the note stem for marking the hands: stem to the right is right hand, and stem to the left is left hand.

Example 8: Note stem The second application of the note stem is for polyphonic music, especially for recognizing voice

leading. In a four-part piece the bass always has the stem on the left, the tenor on the right, alto on the left and soprano on the right. The bass is the main indicator. Therefore, with a three- part piece, the soprano has the stem on the left.

Example 9: Voice leading

Finally a few important remarks remain to be made. Making use of the traditional note symbols is quite a relief for professional musicians who will have to acquire two notations. They need only get used to the new staff system, which might take about four weeks of practice. Here are the words of the pianist Joachim Hess: “If I think back, in how little time (about 2 –3 weeks) it was possible to play your music and how easy it has been since then to chan-ge from traditional to your chromatic notation, and be it for one evening only, then in my view – there should be no substantial obstruction to introducing

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the new notation.” *

Composers might be grateful for the only change, the symbols for whole and half rest, because the old symbols, above or under the line, are not easy to place when writing fast.

Notwithstanding the fact that in ABC Notation more space is needed in the vertical extension, the usage of space on paper is generally the same as in traditional notation. This was the great surprise when the first music books printed in ABC Nota-tion were published. Abolishing the accidentals generally saves so much space in the horizontal extension that it balances out the greater amount of space used in the vertical.

By arguing that five more notes in the octave will need more space on paper, many notation inventors have been mistaken. Even maestros such as Busoni and Schoenberg were not sufficiently well-informed in this respect: they did not know of or discarded the possibility of a grand staff. To save on space, the former had the higher octaves

Please compare with the manuscript edition (Faksimile-Ausgabe): J. S. Bach: Orgelbüchlein, Bärenreiter 1981, J. S. Bach: Klavierbüchlein für Anna Magdalena Bach 1725, Bärenreiter 1988,J. S. Bach: Die Kunst der Fuge (VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik Leipzig 1979) Musikverlag B. Schott's Söhne.

appear in smaller print and the latter squeezed three different half steps into a slightly wider space between the staff lines with the aid of angled ledger lines. The many inventors who sculptured the note heads into triangular or other shapes for indicating half steps are only mentioned in passing here. They apparently did not realize that a note is only a dot, a somewhat enlarged dot, on a line.

The fact that the grand staff is not a new invention at all seems to have bypassed the world of experts. Even in The Oxford Companion to Music you can read: “This is a fictional notational device rather unnecessarily introduced by musical pedagogues for explaining the clefs”. Apparently the knowledge had been lost that J. S. Bach, his family and circle of musicians were writing and playing harpsichord and organ music according to a grand staff system. They made use of a combination of F-clef with C-clef on the bottom line (soprano clef). The space between the two systems is made very narrow, and only the note B is placed into this space. This is a perfect grand staff in the old system.

Example 10: Bach's grand staff

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PUBLICATIONSAlbert Brennink

EDITION CHROMA

The newsletter Chroma Report was published quarterly from July 1997 until 2000 and half-yearly from Spring 2000 until Fall 2001; in total 16 issues.Issues included discussions of notation proposals by Schoenberg and Busoni. The last two years were in three languages: English, French and German.

Manuscript Paper with 4-line-staves, format: height 42 cm x 29 cm 10 sheets 5, - €

Please order on our website: www.araumus.com

Legend:

* The size is, if not indicated differently, (hight) 27, 5 cm x 21, 5 cm

hc = hard cover / sc = soft cover

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1 1976 Die Halbtonschrift oder Die Chromatische Notation, eine graphische Darstellung der Musik The Chromatic Notation, a graphical Representation of Music booklet A 5 * 26 pages cs sold out

2 1978 La Notation Chromatique ou L'Ecriture par Demi-Tones Une representation graphique de la musique La Notatione Chromatica, una reprezentatione grafica della musica booklet A 5 * 26 pages cs sold out

3 1983 Chromatische Notation Die Ergebnisse und Schlussfolgerungen der internationalen Umfrage durch die Fondation Chroma, format 31 x 23, 5 cm 48 pages cs sold out

4 1983 Chromatic Notation The results and conclusions of the international enquiry by the Chroma Foundation, format 31 x 23, 5 cm 48 pages cs sold out

5 1992 Equal Temperament Music Notation Results and conclusions of the music notation reform by the Chroma Foundation 96 pages hc 25, - €

6 1992 Wohltemperierte Notenschrift Ergebnisse und Schlussfolgerungen der Notenschrift-Reform durch die Chroma-Stiftung 96 pages hc 25, - €

7 1994 Le Temperament Egal en Notation Musicale La Notation Chromatique Ailler Brennink Results et conclusions de la réforme de la notation musicale par la Fondation Chroma 96pages hc 25, - €

8 1994 Chinese Version of Equal Temperament Music Notation 112 pages hc 25, - €

9 2001 Tutorial for Piano and Organ Playing according to Chromatic Notation, Part I in co-operation with Joachim Hess, Pianist, and Carsten Lenz, Organist. (broadside) 52 pages sc 20, - €

by Albert BrenninkBooks about the ABC Notation

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10 1976 The first Three Contrapuncti from J. S. Bach's 'The Art of Fugue' in ABC Notation as a supplement to the booklet "The Chromatic Notation" Format A4 12 pages sc sold out

A. BRENNINK11 1983 Blütezeit, ein Lieder-Zyklus für eine Singstimme und Klavier Blossom-Time, a cycle of songs for voice and piano 22 Gesänge, 22 cantos; German & Englisch Format 33 cm x 25, 5 cm 76 pages sc 40, - €

J. S. BACH12 1995 The Well-Tempered Clavier I Foreword: English, French, German 118 plus 10 pages hc 40, - €

J. S. BACH13 1996 The Well-Tempered Clavier II Foreword: English, French, German 138 plus 10 pages hc 45, - €

J. S. BACH14 1996 Organ Works I Orgel-Büchlein with 4 Faksimiles (broadside) Foreword: English, French, German 86 plus 10 pages hc 35, - €

Albert Brennink15 1996 Christmas-Sinfonia (broadside) 44 pages sc 20, - € Four organ pieces wherein a transition is performed from a subject with the tonality of the whole-tone scale to a chorale melody with diatonic tonality.

J. S. BACH16 1997 Inventions and Sinfonias With introduction by Joh. Seb. Bach 1723 62 plus 10 pages sc 20, - €

J. S. BACH17 1998 Organ Works II Chorale Partitas and Schübler Chorales Broadside 21, 5 cm x 31 cm 84 pages sc 25, - €

J. S. BACH18 1998 Chromatic Fantasia und Fugue 16 Seiten sc 10, - €

edited by Albert BrenninkMusic Books in ABC-Notation

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J. S. BACH19 1999 Organ Works III Preludes und Fugues Part I Broadside 21, 5 cm x 31 cm 116 pages sc 30, - €

J. S. BACH20 1999 Clavier-Exercises Part I: Partitas With a dedication by the author 1731 114 plus 10pages sc 30, - €

L. van BEETHOVEN21 1999 Sonatinas and Early Sonatas 54 plus 6 pages sc 20, - €

L. van BEETHOVEN22 2000 Rondos and Other Piano Pieces 48 plus 6 pages sc 20, - €

R. SCHUMANN23 2000 Album for the Young Volume I composed in 1848 for younger players 22 plus 6 pages sc 15, - €

R. SCHUMANN24 2000 Album for the Young Volume II composed in 1848 for more advanced players 40 plus 6 pages sc 20, - €

R. SCHUMANN25 2000 Kinderszenen 16 pages sc sold out

F. MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY26 2000 17 Variations Serieuses 22 pages sc 15, - €

J. S. BACH27 2001 Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring and 12 pages sc 10, - € 4 Chorales from Orgelbüchlein for Piano

C. A. DEBUSSY28 2002 Children's Corner petite suite pour piano seul 1906 – 1908 24 pages sc 15, - €

C. A. DEBUSSY29 2003 Two Arabesques 1888 16 pages sc 10, - €

J. S. BACH30 2009 The Art of Fugue in proportional notation Introduction in German and English 82 plus 14 pages hc 30, - € sc 25, - €

ARAUMUS e.V.Association for Research into an Alternative and Universal Music Notation Domplatz 40D-48143 Münster PhoneFax Mobile E-mailInternet

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