Musical Notation as Reminder Rather Than Prescription

One of the puzzles of early chant notation is its lack of precision.  The modern musician cries out, "Where are the pitches?  How can I determine note duration?"

Interestingly (to me anyway) is the similarity I saw the other evening in the documentary, "Geisha: Twilight of the Flowers." One of the women was at her lesson for traditional Japanese singing. Of course, it's primarily an oral tradition and she was singing along with an older woman teacher who sang while accompanying herself on shamisen.  (Another instrumentalist was playing behind the student, so that she could concentrate on her singing. Perhaps this was a student of the shamisen?)

Her book contained only text in the vertical format used for Japanese.  However, she held in her hand a red pencil with which she could make "reminder" notations alongside the words.

Image taken from "Grand Master guides novices
Japanese musical tradition,"
 https://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S24/28/47Q36/index.xml

While what you see here is music for shakuhachi, the effect is the same. You may have difficulty seeing the notation because of the contrast, but the caption on the original article points out that the notation is an outline rather than a prescription.

In the modern Western tradition, we want all the rules of the game spelled out.  And we want them spelled out consistently - from one piece to another. (Have you ever tried to get a novice chorus to "swing the eights"?)

Obviously, we believe that this lets us carry forward the composer's intention from one century to the next, from one performance to the next.  And that can be good.  However, it also means that we can speed up the learning process compared to learning from an oral tradition taught by someone more expert than we and that we are not particularly interested in the skill and interpretation of the teacher (not until you get way up the food chain of faculty, that is).

Is one way better than the other?  Not necessarily.  Do we regard music that is learned through oral traditions as less valuable or less difficult?  I hope not.