Music is an ephemeral object, its existence defined by the flow of time and bound to the present of its performance. If music would not be written down, how could we know the musical compositions from times remote? Notation supplies a unique access to music from the past.

In this course you will learn how to understand the theoretical and practical principles of reading musical notation from the Middle Ages until the Early Modern period. You will get the basic knowledge needed to decode and transcribe early notational systems. We would also like to encourage you to reflect upon the challenges and principles of musical notation as we take into consideration semiotic approaches and visual theory. In addition this course offers several recordings of ancient-music performances provided by musicians of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. This will ensure that you will experience the music also aesthetically.

Some of the central questions we shall tackle are the following:

What do we know about the materiality of musical notation?
How can we learn to read music written in its original notation?
Are we able to reconstruct music from the past?
How did the way we note music evolve through history?
With which strategies did people visualise music in medieval times?
What can we learn from the history of musical writing in order to deepen our understanding of music?

These are questions for anyone who has ever picked up a manuscript or a facsimile with original notation from the Middle Ages or the Renaissance and enjoyed it. For the answers, we must look to our best current understanding of how notation works – and that means entering into the field of musicology and music philology.

From Ink to Sound provides the basic knowledge you need to read original notation. At the same time the course starts with the assumption that there is a gap between the philological study of musical sources and their reflection in cultural history that should be bridged.

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