How to Write Music: Musical Orthography — Story, Setting & Ideas

Diction and the Performer's Blind Spot

Harris's language is direct and occasionally wry. He notes that musicians who play or sing a note at sight will, when asked to write it, “first falter over and then bungle.” The contrast between polished examination papers and “puerility” in handwriting is, he says, “ridiculous.” Such phrasing reveals an author impatient with pretension. He grounds his argument in psychology—conceptual action is a higher function than perceptual—but never lets theory overshadow the practical aim. The tone is that of a seasoned teacher who has seen the same mistakes repeated.

Historical Anchors in Notation Rules

Harris frequently cites historical turning points to justify modern practice. He traces the shift from lozenge-shaped notes to round notes, crediting Playford's Whole Booke of Psalms (circa 1675) as an early printed example. The replacement of separate hooks with connecting horizontal lines is dated precisely to the Restoration, with Playford again named. Harris even notes that Marcello's Psalms, published in Venice as late as 1724–27, still used separate hooks, while a 1757 edition in his possession shows united hooks—a detail he attributes to venue rather than date. These references ground his prescriptions in documented evolution.

Prescriptive Precision in Stem and Hook Placement

The manual's core is a set of firm rules. Stems must be placed at the right side of the note-head when turned up, at the left when turned down—though Harris admits the rule is “observed less in the case of half notes than of shorter notes.” Hooks, with one exception, go on the right side of the stem. The exception occurs when longer and shorter notes share a group: hooks not common to the whole group must lie within the group, or within the beat if the group spans multiple beats. Harris illustrates with figures (e.g., Fig. 20) and warns that in compound time, four eighth notes must not share a hook but be grouped as three and one, one and three, or two and two according to beat position.

Rhythmic Grouping Across the Bar Line

Harris insists that hooks follow rhythm so closely that a phrase crossing the measure may have its hook cross the bar line, uniting notes in different measures. He also allows notes separated by a rest to share a hook. This attention to rhythmic integrity shows his concern for clarity over mechanical convenience. He notes that slanted hooks may follow the direction of ascending or descending note groups, though he personally prefers straight hooks. These details reveal a writer who expects the copyist to understand the music, not merely reproduce symbols.

Harris's manual rewards readers who attend to his historical references and precise terminology. The numbered paragraphs and frequent cross-references make it a reference work, but the author's voice—sometimes wry, always exact—gives it character. Readers should note that the excerpts cover only the first half of the book; later sections on vocal music, accidentals, and proofreading may extend or qualify the rules presented here.

There’s something comforting in Harris’s insistence on getting the small things right—stems, hooks, the quiet architecture of a phrase—as if notation itself were a kind of memory. It made me think of Amy Fay’s letters from Germany, that same patient devotion to craft, half a world away. Music-Study in Germany, from the Home Correspondence of Amy Fay — Context and Discussion holds that same unhurried intimacy, like hearing someone practice scales in the next room.