Tim Mahon wrote:

>It contained a 'dictionary' of musical themes by taking the first seven
>notes of the themes and converting them to an alphabetical notation on
>the basis of the note's relationship to its predecessor -- did it go up
>or down or stay the same?  I can't recall the letters used, but if U=Up,
>D=Down and S=Same, then the opening of Beethoven's Fifth, for example,
>would have been noted as SSSDUSS.

The title was "A Dictionary of Musical Themes" by Harold Barlow and Sam
Morgenstern; Crown Publishers, New York, 1948. May have been revised later
but surely out of print now.

The notation was ABCDEFG (plus sharps and flats) and varied in length, with
everything transposed into the key of C and listed in alphabetical order.
These were cross-referenced to one line samples in the original keys and
treble or bass clef notation in alphabetical order by composer.

The selection of themes reflects mid-century practice--many more themes from
Brahms symphonies than from Bruckner (3, 4, 5, 7, 9), Mendelssohn more than
Mahler (1, 2, 4, 5, 9), etc. But still fun to browse after fifty years.

Philip Melnick
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