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M U S I C A L N O T A T I O N
During the V and VII b.C. a new system still based on neumas [commas, accents, dots, lines, etc.] was developed, including slight indications regarding melodic movement.
It wasn't meant to exactly determine the notes pitch but to give just an approximation on how the melody went, thus helping the singer when his/her memory failed. The most ancient examples of musical notation in Western Europe were written as complementary notations to the singing texts [adiastematic notation, that is, neumas with no lines indicating pitch].
The first manuscripts incorporating intervallic notation [an interval is the distance separating one sound from another] are dated in the late IX century. In the following century, musical notation abandoned the use of the dark neumas to implement Latin characters and a single line as a reference system.
Soon this first line was followed by a second: the French monk and musician Hucbaldo [c.840-930] wrote one of the first compendia of western musical theory where consonance is defined as the simultaneous and harmonic meeting of two sounds coming from different sources. Hucbaldo used two lines to indicate the distance between five tones. A line represents the Fa sound and the other, the Do sound. For further clarity he painted them in different colours, one red and the other yellow.
Around the XI century a Benedictine monk named Guido D'Arezzo developed in his treatise Micrologus [c.1025] a system of four lines: the tetragram. A yellow line represented Do5 [Ut]; a red one Fa4; a black one was La intermediate and another black one [on top or below Mi] represented Re. Through the position of the notes along the lines he indicated the sounds pitch and foresaw the inclusion of additional inferior and superior lines when necessary. His system was accepted and applied until present as the traditional musical notation system of the gregorian chant. Another of Guido's enhancements was the identification of octaves ordering the notes from lower to higher pitch as Graves, Acutæ y Superacuæ.
the notes' evolution: virga, punctum cuadratum and punctum inclinatum
Though the five·line system [pentagram] we use nowadays had already appeared in the XI century, it wasn't until the XVI when a general agreement was reached on its application. However, many composers felt the need to use more than five lines; Girolamo Frescobaldi and Sweelink, for example, used six and even eight lines. The pentagram remains even today the most efficient system to determine precisely a note pitch; though its five lines are insufficient to represent all sounds, it enables the use of additional lines.
: some musical signs
The horizontal episema is a line drawn on top of one or more notes to represent light and expressive prolongation. The episema increases the note's time·value a bit, but doesn't double it.
Pauses were indicated through transversal lines:
· The minimum divisory line separates the incise [minor parts in which a text is divided]; it doesn't imply respiration.
· The Minor divisory line separates members within a same phrase.
· The Major divisory line separates phrases. The silence equals a simple note's time·value and forces to take a breath.
· The Double divisory line indicates a major conclusion or the end of the composition. The silence equals a simple note's time·value, sometimes it lasts a bit longer.
The climacus indicated the stair:
and the scandicus, ascension:
[more info on musical notation]
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