ABSTRACT
Tables, charts and diagrams constitute a conspicuous feature of music theoretical treatises and music textbooks, and an important means for presenting pedagogical material. This chapter examines a number of such large charts and tables. It also examines synoptic music charts as a special tool for the circulation of musical knowledge. The chapter focuses on the pitches, Hieronymus Praetorius' desire to create systematic and thoroughgoing dichotomies sometimes forces him to introduce distinctions in which one term is effectively void. Johannes Fries, an influential humanist teacher in Zurich, published a large single-sheet Synopsis musicae in 1552, produced by Johann Froschauer, the most important printer in Zurich at that time. Music textbooks usually covered the scale, solmisation, intervals, the modes, mensural notation, and in some cases also the rules of singing and counterpoint, but an author might limit his treatment to the first parts in order to present a basic introduction.
