English

Noun

musicography ‎(uncountable)

1. Writing on the subject of music.
   • 1919, Phillips Barry, “Greek Music”, in The Musical quarterly, volume 5, page 611:

     The unanimous testimony of scores and of musicography is to this effect, and establishes, as an inviolable rule, the close on the inferior dominant.

   • 1991, Carleton Sprague Smith, editor, Libraries, History, Diplomacy, and the Performing Arts: Essays in Honor of Carleton Sprague Smith:

     Other now standard histories of music in Latin American nations that skirt developments after 1820, 1901, or 1950 emphasize an ever-present problem in Latin American musicography. The only histories of music in their nations with which reigning Latin American composers are pleased are those narrated by themselves.

   • 1997, Paul Henry Lang, Musicology and Performance, page 60:

     We may jump a century and a quarter in English musicography but will find that with a very few exceptions the romantic effusion deepened while scholarship lessened, both of them considerably.

2. (obsolete) The art or science of writing music and of musical notation.
   • 1842 October 1, The Metropolitan Magazine, volume 35:

     The short-hand of musicography alone, separated from the material accompanying it, might, we think, be found useful in no ordinary degree to the musical world.

   • 1843 March 1, V. D. De Stains, “Phonography: or the writing of sounds”, in The Gentleman's Magazine, volume 19, page 292:

     This work is divided into two parts, logography, or universal writing of speech, and musicography, or symbolical writing in music; the first of which offers a new set of phonetic characters as a substitute for our degenerated logographic system, and the second a reformation of our musical notation; a short-hand form of each system being joined to it.

   • 1867 March 29, Journal of the Society of Arts, page 292:

     There are continually springing up, however, advocates of new systems of musicography the adoption of which would reduce all our musical heir-looms to the level of waste paper, and most existing musical science and skill to the level of those of these advocates; for it is remarkable that no scheme for the reformation of musicography has ever been proposed by any person of acknowledged musical science or skill.

Related terms

• musicology
• musicographer

Derived terms

• musicographical
• musicographic