notation

System of signs and symbols for writing music, either for performers to read from, or to make a permanent record. Early systems of music notation were developed by the ancient Sumerians, by the Chinese in the 3rd century BC, and later by the ancient Greeks and Romans for their music dramas. The Greeks were the first to name the notes of the scale with letters of the alphabet.

A form of notation using signs called neumes appeared in Europe in the Middle Ages as a means of writing down plainsong. These graphic signs showed the rise and fall of the notes of a melody, but did not give a precise placing of pitch or rhythm. The system of using notes on a stave or staff of horizontal lines first appeared in the 11th century, and was invented by an Italian monk, Guido of Arezzo (c. 991–after 1033).

Modern music notation uses a stave of five lines, with a clef to show the exact pitch of the notes on it. The position of a note on the stave represents its pitch, and the shape of the note and its ‘tail’ indicate its duration in time. Other signs and words can be added to the written music to show the tempo, dynamics (how loudly or softly the music should be played), and how the music should be played – for example legato (smoothly) or staccato (each note short and separate).

The need for music notation The vast majority of music belongs to some form of oral/aural tradition, and has never been written down. It is generally passed from one performer to another by repetition and memory, and consequently, like the game ‘Chinese whispers’, changes its character through the ages. The need for a more reliable system for instructing performers and recording music for posterity was felt very early in the history of music. Unfortunately, the lack of written records makes it difficult for us to know much about the music of ancient cultures, and what we do know usually comes from verbal rather than musical sources, from examination of the instruments played, and from texts about playing technique.

Early systems It is likely that music notation developed alongside written language, and that the ancient Sumerians and Egyptians devised symbols to accompany the system of hand signs they used, indicating the pitch and shape of the melody by a sort of ‘conducting’; certainly the Chinese had a quite sophisticated system of notation as early as the 3rd century BC. These early systems consisted of either symbols to represent separate vocal syllables – a form of solmization – or signs and instructions for playing specific instruments – a form of tablature. The use of letters of the alphabet to name notes of the scale dates back to ancient Greece and possibly earlier, and was well established by 500 BC, when letter-names were given to the diatonic scale, and inflections of a semitone or even a quarter-tone could be expressed by rotation of the letter symbols. This system seems to have been developed more for the study of acoustics than as an aid to performance or to make a permanent record of specific pieces of music.

Neumic notation It was not until the 7th century that a notation was developed for recording pieces of music with some degree of accuracy. As the medieval Church had a virtual monopoly on written learning, it is not surprising that it was here that modern music notation had its beginnings. The chants of plainsong had been until then an oral/aural tradition, but to the medieval mind this was not a satisfactory state of affairs; some means of writing down the plainchant melodies for performance and posterity had to be found. As this was a purely vocal tradition, the first symbols derived from written language, and resembled acute and grave accents representing the rise and fall of the melody. These signs, known as neumes, developed into a complex system in which an individual neume could represent a single note or as many as four notes in a particular sequence. The neumic system gave a very graphic indication of the shape of a melody, but the addition of a horizontal line removed its main drawback by fixing an absolute pitch as a point of reference.

The stave Guido of Arezzo further improved the system of notating plainsong in the first half of the 11th century. As well as inventing his own version of solmization, using the syllables ut, re, mi, etc. in conjunction with a set of mnemonics related to the joints of the fingers (the ‘Guidonian hand’), he also suggested the use of a stave of four horizontal lines, which would not only provide a pitch reference, but would also graphically represent relative pitch by the vertical placing of notes on its lines and spaces. He is also credited with the invention of the clef, further refining the accuracy of the system.

Guido's innovations were, however, all concerned with notating pitch, and it was not until the 13th century that any systematic reform of rhythmic notation was achieved. The first to tackle this was Franco of Cologne, who codified and rationalized the existing system, and established the relationships between different note values. A system similar to present-day rhythmic notation had evolved from this by the middle of the 15th century, but based on triple rather than duple divisions.

The modern system By about 1700 the modern system of notation, using a stave of five lines as opposed to the four used in plainsong, had become firmly established. It almost completely replaced solmization and tablature, although some forms of solmization, such as the tonic sol-fa, are still used today, especially in vocal music and as a teaching aid, and tablature has remained in use by lutenists and guitarists. Despite its drawbacks, particularly in notating non-diatonic pitches and complex rhythms, conventional modern notation is also being used outside Western art music: music of previously aural/oral traditions is being transcribed, and even classical traditions such as Chinese music now make use of Western notation.

Innovations The history of music notation is one of continual evolution, and the 20th century is no exception. As composers have found new means of expression, they have developed new means of writing them down. Methods of indicating microtones, intervals less than a semitone, were found early in the century, and symbols borrowed from mathematics have been used to notate complex rhythmic relationships. Some composers, such as John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen, virtually abandoned conventional notation in favour of graphic representations or even passages of text; others, such as Pierre Boulez and Luciano Berio, have attempted to refine it and improve its accuracy. There have even been attempts, particularly in the first half of the century, to invent completely new systems such as Klavarscribo, but these have not been enthusiastically received.

notation

In dance, the codification and recording of dances by symbols. There are several dance notation systems; prominent among them is Labanotation.