Biblioteca de la Guitarra y Cuerda Pulsada

Twenty years have elapsed since Johannes Wolf published the first and, to the present day, the only complete study on musical notation. The extraordinary merits of this book do not need to be emphasized here, since they are known to every student of musicology. It suffices to say that a score of years has by no means outdated it or rendered it useless, Today it is still an excellent example of what it was meant to be, namely, a 'Handbuch der Notationskunde' or, in other words, a work in which the entire field of musical notation from the earliest periods to the present day is treated. So broad a scope necessarily involves the inclusion of much material of infrequent occurrence and of subordinate importance; and on the other hand, a rather cursory treatment of material which, from the student's point of view, is certainly deserving of more thorough discussion. The unavoidable shortcomings of so comprehensive a plan as is carried out in the Handbuch y together with the natural progress in musicological research made during the last twenty years, constitute the point of departure of the present book, and indicate its position in the literature on the...