Surely the question of whether a composer is 'better' than another because of the form of notation employed is to look at the question the wrong way round. The point, it seems to me, is that notation adapts itself to suit what the composer intends to write. The 17th century, put crudely, saw the development of the tempered key and thus of tonality, and there is simply no way in which the B-Minor Mass could have been written in tablature. And after Bach, Haydn and co. developed a new style of composition which reached its climax in Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, and their scores and writing techniques are quite unlike those of Bach (no figured bass, standardisation of the orchestra, addition of dynamics, etc.). And from them emerged Chromaticism, which again demanded new ways writing music (compare the scores of Tristan and the B-Minor mass).
And Chromaticism led to 12-tone music and what followed, and once more the style of writing changed. The score of Stockhausen's Piano Piece X, one of the very greatest solo piano works of the 20th century, uses a notation devised to meet the needs of the music, while Boulez in masterpieces such as 'Repons', with all the electronics employed, invents his own form of notation, as he had earlier done in a different way for 'Pli selon pli', which makes no use whatever of electronics. Add to that development of new ways of building instruments to cope with the demands composers made (e.g. the piano), and the way composers made use of new developments (e.g. Mozart and the clarinet). The reason Bach's slower non-organ keyboard music is so highly embellished is that the harpsichord could not sustain sound as could the piano in, say, the opening of the slow movement of the Hammerklavier. But to suggest that quality is merely the result of the notation used seems, as I say, to put the cart before the horse. Whatever debates there may be about learning tablature in the 21st century, it obviously worked for the lutenists. And surely no one would suggest that, say, Dowland, is a lesser composer than Wagner? That kind of thing gets no one anywhere fast, except into almost pointless arguments which in the last resort often boil down to a question of taste. Clearly there are criteria on which we tend to agree and by which we judge Beethoven to be better than, say, Spohr, (and, needless to say, Shostakovich infinitely inferior to Boulez), but when it comes to comparing acknowledged masters of different periods, one is merely comparing apples with pears. Cheers Tom
