Words sit on the page differently if they first existed as sound versus writing; they crystallize differently. I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently in relation to scores, feeling a little suspicious of writing things down, and wanting to take a step back to review what happens when sound is transduced into image. I’ve gotten interested in orality studies because the relationship of literacy and orality seems to have a lot in common with the relationship of notated music and aurally-composed music.
In the 1930s, Milman Parry upended long-held assumptions about the past by demonstrating that the Homeric epics were ...