John Chambers wrote:
>
> Just out of curiosity, are there any musical traditions/styles that
> use a relative (or cumulative) approach?
Actually yes. That's how it was done untill way into the 17th Century.
>
> I'd imagine that this could make the music difficult to read at
> times.
That's probably why they stopped doing it that way. The introduction of
the "modern" way of doing it, coincides with the early baroque
"affected" style of music that called for considerably more accidentals.
>
> This seems somewhat related to the old question of the persistence of
> accidentals. Current conventional practice is that accidentals last
> to the next bar line, but there are several musical styles that use
> the "only the one note" rule. This is true for European music before
> 1600 or so, and also for much modern music (especially atonal).
Yes, so obviously the "cumulative" system in early music only applies to
combinations of key signatures and accidentals. Anyways doubel b's and
sharps simply didn't exist at that time.
Frank Nordberg
http://www.musicaviva.com
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