Music Notation and Terminology

by Karl Wilson Gehrkens

The History of Music Notation

Many conflicting statements have been made regarding the history and development of music writing, and the student who is seeking light on this subject is often at a loss to determine what actually did happen in the rise of our modern system of writing music. We have one writer for example asserting that staff notation was begun by drawing a single red line across the page, this line representing the pitch f (fourth line, bass staff), the neumae (the predecessors of our modern notes) standing either for this pitch f, or for a higher or lower pitch, according to their position on the line, or above or below it. "Another line," continues this writer, "this time of yellow color, was soon added above the red one, and this line was to represent c' (middle C). Soon the colors of these lines were omitted and the letters F and C were placed at the beginning of each of them. From this arose our F and C clefs, which preceded the G clef by some centuries."[37]

Another writer[38] gives a somewhat different explanation, stating that the staff system with the use of clefs came about through writing a letter (C or F) in the margin of the manuscript and drawing a line from this letter to the neume which was to represent the tone for which this particular letter stood.

A third writer[39] asserts that because the alphabetical notation was not suitable for recording melodies because of its inconvenience in sight-singing "points were placed at definite distances above the words and above and below one another." "In this system ... everything depended on the accuracy with which the points were interspersed, and the scribes, as a guide to the eye, began to scratch a straight line across the page to indicate the position of one particular scale degree from which all the others could be shown by the relative distances of their points. But this was not found sufficiently definite and the scratched line was therefore colored red and a second line was added, colored yellow, indicating the interval of a fifth above the first."

It will be noted that all three writers agree that a certain thing happened, but as in the case of the four Gospels in the New Testament, not all the writers agree on details and it is difficult to determine which account is most nearly accurate in detail as well as in general statement. Communication was much slower a thousand years ago than now and ideas about new methods of doing things did not spread rapidly, consequently it is entirely possible that various men or groups of men in various places worked out a system of notation differing somewhat in details of origin and development but alike in final result. The point is that the development of musical knowledge (rise of part-writing, increased interest in instrumental music, etc.), demanded a more exact system of notation than had previously existed, just as the development of science in the nineteenth century necessitated a more accurate scientific nomenclature, and in both cases the need gave rise to the result as we have it to-day.

Out of the chaos of conflicting statements regarding the development of music notation, the student may glean an outline-knowledge of three fairly distinct periods or stages, each of these stages being intimately bound up with the development of music itself in that period. These three stages are:

(1) The Greek system, which used the letters of the alphabet for representing fixed pitches.

(2) The period of the neumae.

(3) The period of staff notation.

Of the Greek system little is known beyond the fact that the letters of the alphabet were used to represent pitches. This method was probably accurate enough, but it was cumbersome, and did not afford any means of writing "measured music" nor did it give the eye any opportunity of grasping the general outline of the melody in its progression upward and downward, as staff notation does. The Greek system seems to have been abandoned at some time preceding the fifth century. At any rate it was about this time that certain accent marks began to be written above the text of the Latin hymns of the church, these marks serving to indicate in a general way the progress of the melody. E.g., an upward stroke of the pen indicated a rise of the melody, a downward stroke a fall, etc. In the course of two or three centuries these marks were added to and modified quite considerably, and the system of notation which thus grew up was called "neume notation," the word neume (sometimes spelled neuma, or pneuma) being of Greek origin and meaning a nod or sign.