Conclusion

In this free course you have considered some of the main ways in which music has been transmitted over the years and continues to be passed on to us today, through oral/aural communication, notation (in manuscript or print) and recordings. You have studied how each musical source represents merely one instance of potentially numerous ways of communicating a single work: by looking at ‘Happy Birthday to You’, you observed how the means by which a specific piece is transmitted can change over the years and how these changes can be closely linked to the different meanings and functions assigned to a work. Through your study of three examples of musical media from different historical periods and geographical locations, you were able to further assess how the form of a musical source can reflect both the context in which it was created (particularly with regard to social and technological factors) and, more specifically, the recipients for whom these manuscripts, prints and recordings were produced.