Henriëtte Kat – Simplified Sheet Music for piano

When I was 10 years old, I stopped my piano lessons. I had no fun in those complicated scores. Still I went on piano playing and made my own little songs. As a student at the conservatorium for singing, I got my own piano and composed a number of little piano pieces, and then I left for Paris.

After my return more than 15 years later, I still remembered them all, managed to rent a piano and went on with my compositions as if nothing had happened. Destiny wanted me to meet someone who learned me working with a composition program and synthesizers. What I did for a long time and about a hundred sometimes complicated compositions (see: www.compositions.jetkat.nl).

When a few years ago an old friend asked me about my first piano compositions, I gave the scores like I had written them. No easy job for her to read it, so her piano teacher re-wrote them in official notation. At our surprise no easy job for me to read that, and so I found out that I was musically dyslectic.

What is simplified notation?

It appears to be a known issue these days and piano teachers run regularly into similar problems like these with their pupils. So I invented my own simplified notation: every black key on the piano has qua notation a flat sign before it. Of course I realize that this violates music theory and harmony teaching.

Still I decided to publish two volumes, Le Voyage A, 10 short pieces before I left for Paris and Le voyage B, 10 short pieces after my return to Amsterdam. Because, like for me, it’s a pity when pupils stop their musical study for the complexity of the notation.

To be clear: musical dyslexia has nothing to do with dyslexia for reading words or with musicality. I hope that my effort will attribute to more solutions.

Henriëtte Kat