A (very) Short History of Musical Notation
As we are all in lockdown, I took the opportunity to take a short consensus on what people would like to see written about in a blog – and amongst the many, pleasantly surprising highbrow suggestions, questions about who invented notation systems and why came up.
Realistically, it would not be feasible for me to even attempt to do a full comprehensive history of notation, because there are so many systems in existence, each with their own syntax, rules and presentation.
So, I’ll focus on Western Musical Notation. This is the system that most people are at least visually familiar with – the weird squiggles and blobs on tight lines, that ONE curly-wurly thing that has become the universal symbol for “Music” (it’s a treble clef, by the way).
Asking the question “who invented notation?” is akin to asking “Who invented language?” – because, in its essence, music, and it’s written counterpart is just that: a form of language.
Keeping, for the moment, that parallel, let’s draw a comparison between the fairy tale and the folk song. Prior to being written down, both of these will have been a form of verbal storytelling, open to (mis)interpretation as the bare bones were passed orally through generations (there is in fact argument in the fairy tale quarter that Cinderella’s glass slipper was in fact fur, as the original Old French words, verre for glass, and vair for fur sounded very similar). It is only when they are written down and preserved visually do the forms become static, and more importantly, “standardised”.
The earliest written (see, it’s written, that’s how we know) mention of the concept of writing down music was by scholar and philosopher Isidore of Seville in the 7th Century, who mused, “unless sounds are held by the memory of man, they perish, because they cannot be written down.”
It was by around the 9th Century that a form of notation was being employed by monasteries to notate Gregorian Chants – this four line system, only outlined melody, not rhythm or any form of standard pitch. Essentially, you could start on any note and then follow the “pattern” written, without having to think much about much else. Known as a neume, this itself borrowed heavily from Eastern systems, primarily from methods on how to read holy scriptures in the Eastern Holy Roman Empire (modern day Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Israel) – the closest modern equivalent is Qur’an readings. This neumatic system is still employed by Orthodox Christian denominations. As a point of interest, I myself have seen early copies of neumatic Gregorian notation in Chateau Puivert in the South of France – I would strongly recommend a visit for the early music enthusiast! Additionally, having sung as a chorister during Mass, plainchant notation is still very similar to original neumatic notation, rhythm being dictated by the conductor, rather collective consciousness or a concept of “time”.
In general, and as is the way with a surprisingly large amount of musical history, it is widely accepted that the institution of the Catholic Church started the process of standardizing (or homogenizing, depending on your point of view) written music. Thus we became introduced to the concept of individual notes, keys, rhythms and articulations, that are the same regardless of where or how you are viewing the music. There is no pinpoint moment these concepts were introduced – in much the same way as language, they will simply have filtered into common usage. Much like language, trends will have ebbed and flowed into consciousness – some will have stayed, some will have been lost to the annals of history.
Jess
