Innovation, Notation, and Reform: Music Notation Patents in the United States, 1802-2022
Date of Award
Spring 2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Music
First Advisor
Quinn, Ian
Abstract
This dissertation focuses on patents of music notation in the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Beginning with the first patent for shape notes given to Andrew Law in 1802, to a patent granted to Benjamin B. Spratling IV in 2022, I have constructed an archive of over 200 unique notation systems that span two centuries. Previous scholarship has evaluated new notation systems on their functionality vis à vis standard practice (Read, 1982; Reed, 1997) or as idiosyncratic manifestations of authorship (Cage, 1969; Cope, 1976; Stone, 1980; Sauer, 2009). My work, in contrast, envisions each notation patent as a data-trace of music making outside the purview of formalized music education and practice, outlining an ongoing, dynamic history of vernacular musicians grappling with the restrictions of formal music writing systems that reveals a diverse history of music making and innovation in the United States. From notation inventions for disabilities to those for specific religious practices, from systems designed to address racial difference to inscription systems for new media such as the player piano, typewriter, and computers, these inventions address concerns around notating, inscribing and visualizing music that remain predominantly on the margins of musicology and music education. Each symbol system, however, represents a distinct mode of knowledge and musical understanding that negotiates between institutionally established standards and extra-institutional factors. As documents of notation reform, each patent challenges the presumed ubiquity and usefulness of standard Western notation practices while exposing their limits. Moreover, these innovations reveal more than unacknowledged musical practices; as forms of Intellectual Property (IP), these patents also reflect a relationship between creativity and ownership that manifest particular late Enlightenment concepts about culture and capital, personhood and property.
Recommended Citation
Dellenbaugh, Virginia Louise, "Innovation, Notation, and Reform: Music Notation Patents in the United States, 1802-2022" (2024). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1378.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1378
