Music in Trains

Engraving is a production step that went from the individual to the pros and is now creeping back to the responsibility of the composer.

Early-music composers had quite possibly the most difficult job: engrave each piece AND develop a system with which to notate. It wasn’t until around at least 800 that music began to be notated in any systematic way and it was a long time (about another 800 years) before the modern system became fairly well developed.

Around 1500, shortly after Gutenberg developed a movable type printing system, music engraving became the job of professionals. Notation was more or less becoming standardized and composers were more easily able to produce multiple copies of a piece of music by handing it over to an engraver.

My recent activities have included a great deal of research in the area of psychology in terms of the concept of creativity. Here is a term that has been lost due to modern usage. For example:

1. The word creativity in popular culture has, at best, an ambiguous definition
2. No one, not even any psychologist, knows exactly what happens in our minds when we are creative
3. Furthermore, some people just seem to be more creative than others, just because of who they are

I don’t know exactly how we got here, but this is where we are.