Patrick,
Upon reading the entire days output, I've drawn the conclusion that you (as my father would say) are full of hooey.
Unlike Mr. Harris, who is too young to be an expert at anything yet,
I have attained the knowledge of years, and my expertise on many musical subjects, while not absolute, is nonetheless undeniable. At least that's what I tell my University students!
So, if you will stipulate to my expertise, this is lecture 1A in my Music Literature class at the several Universities at which I have taught.
Notation is not Music any more than a painting of a dog is a dog, a picture of a box of godiva is chocolate, or an illustration of Pebble Beach is a golf course.
Notation -- the score -- is a mere visual representation of the music.
Music is organized sound.
That said, Bach, Beethoven, and the Boys (and girls, though you will find few of them in your music history books) did not generally create a score of any major work and call it good. Beethoven, in particular, scratched and crossed and erased and redid over and over for decades. Literally. And would no doubt have continued to do so had he lived longer.
And then there are the versions the composer did for different concert venues, and those recomposed to be used in different pieces. When composers ran out of time to do a new piece for this week's performance, it was common practice for them to adapt a previous work for the cause. Since the work was their own, it was not considered plagiarism (although modifying other's works wasn't, either). Just don't let me catch you doing that with your own term papers!
And then there are the inevitable errors by the multitude of copyists who prepared the final scores. All of these circumstances (and others too numerous to mention, as I do have a job) have resulted in our being handed down many different versions of most major "classical" works. So which is the "official" version? The last one? The first one? Rollover Beethoven?
Bach and Mozart (and almost every other performer/composer of note) played their pieces with different notes, different tempos, different EVERYTHING in performances as a matter of common practice. These performers were more like Jazz musicians than "classical" musicians of our time. This is not speculation. It is accepted fact amongst the musical literati in academia. And this (not the notation of whatever score you accept as original) was the music.
Go play in a piano concerto competition . . . if you make the finals you will be invited to choose which version of the score you will have the orchestra play.
Listen to four recordings of Brahm's Hungarian Dance #5, and you will find two of them are played in a different form . . . ending with one A section before the coda, rather than two. Which is "right?" Both.
I can give you examples of how wrong you are all day and half the night, however, your contention that there is one score doesn't matter. The point is moot, because (forgive me if I repeat myself, but this is an important concept that bears repeating) Music is NOT notation. Music is organized sound. Notation is a mere visual representation of Music.
So we come to lecture 2b in my Medieval Music History course. Notation.
The notation of today is not the notation of the past. The first western notation extant (I am excluding Ancient Greek notation, as we have no idea how to read it) was of Gregorian chant, and there were NO lines. Lines came later, and went through many variations, from one to many, before being standardized. Notes were square, not round, and there were no stems, no eighth or sixteenth notes. Notes were called nuemes. Longer notes were breves and semi-breves, and shorter notes were called minims. No, there were no maxims.
There were no key signatures or accidentals. The hexachord and mode determined the "key" (though they would not have recognized that term). The church modes were used, rather than our diatonic major or minor scale. The meter was shown by a circle (perfect time) or a semicircle (you guessed it, imperfect time). Perfect time was in three, to symbolize the holy trinity. Imperfect time was in two, and was notated by a semi-circle that looks like a C . . . corresponding to our "common time," or 2/4 (though, again, the monks wouldn't have recognized those terms).
Notation changed over centuries, and Baroque rules were similar to today's. Even so, you would not be proficient at playing Baroque notation. Mozart's notation would be almost as difficult to read. That is why so many various editions of Western Art Music are available; the editors continue to try to make the definitive edition, but there is too much debate, too many "original" versions, and too many unknowns to make this possible.
In regard to staff lines, you make a very basic and understandable error. You are limiting yourself to what you see. Fortunately, what you see is not all that is there!
Even today, there are NOT five lines on a staff. There are INFINITE lines on a staff. The fact that you only see five speaks to your lack of training and/or imagination. The standard PIANO staff has ten visible long lines in two clefs. These staffs are separated by one ledger line, which is only visible when it is needed. In addition, there are infinite ledger lines above and below the standard stave (plural of staff), which allow the entire keyboard to be notated.
The orchestral score has an infinite number of lines, in various clefs, allowing music to be notated that extends beyond the range of the piano. The only limitation in most Western music is that we use 12 semitones to make up our chromatic scale. This limitation is not present in other cultures, nor was it present before the Baroque period, before well-tempered or mean tuning was accepted as standard.
But this is a subject for another day (that would be Music History Lecture 17c). For today, I will be ecstatic if we can be well-tempered but not Mean in our tunings with each other,
and if you can accept that Music is not notation, but that notation is merely a device for visually representing music, for our convenience.
And now back to clarifying my music/golf course analogy.
I spoke earlier of an old collection of "The Masters for Beginning Pianists" I found at Gib's parent's home. Inside its tattered cover were butchered but recognizable versions Beethoven's Fifth, the Pathetique, Rhapsody in Blue, Debussy's Cake Walk, and The Spinning Song. Shudder. (Who decided The Spinning Song should be classified as a masterwork remains a mystery).
The simplification of these masterworks for the technically challenged is more akin to changing green complexes than my original analogy which I intended to compare the technical advancement of instruments with the technical advances in clubs and balls.
The first is dreadful. The other (IMHO) is progress.
Hopefully this has cleared up some misunderstanding. Mr. Harris is correct on almost every musical point. A- (because I never give A's). Patrick, you must go back to class and take remedial theory.
My office hours are from 11 to 12 on T and Th.