ABSTRACT
During the past five years, as I have sifted through a vast number of recordings of primitive and folk music from many parts of the world, it has struck me more and more that a fresh approach was necessary in order to classify and understand this material. Our present system of musical notation, adequate for European fine-art music, is often unable to convey the most characteristic aspects of primitive and folk music. The more refined the scores, the more certainly the essence of the exotic music escapes through the lines and spaces.
