From Tim Gossling
John Gratwick’s letter about Denys Parsons’s Directory of Tunes is
interesting, but does not go back far enough
(10 March, p 57).
I have a copy of the Dictionary of Musical Themes by Barlow and Morgenstern,
first published in 1949. This transposes all tunes to the key of C (major or
minor). It includes sharps and flats, but omits octave and note-length
information. This is more detailed than Parsons’s approach, except that there is
no distinction between, say, CG up a fifth and CG down a fourth.
Using Barlow and Morgenstern requires a little more musical ability, but
should lead to more focused search results with shorter “words”, and better
musicological information.
Cambridge
