14 The Evolution of Musical Notation

The Evolution of Musical Notation WorksheetEpitaph of Seikilos        Earliest record of written music        1^st century B.C.       Written on a tombstone         

Music notation begins above the 6th line of the lyrics        

 The first 15 letters of the Greek alphabet were used to notate music         Length of notes were denoted by the direction the letter faced

Ancient Greece         Music notation well established by 500 B.C.       

  Based off of a tetrachords  four notes, descending, spanning intervals of a fourth       Diatonic (a)       Chromatic (b)       Enharmonic (c)Later notation and Chant         After this ancient period, there is no record of music notation until the 9th century         Chant music was based on signs and symbols known as neumes         

Neumes show pitches or group of pitches in a melody         Also showed the rise and fall of the notes in the melody Did NOT denote pitch or rhythm         Neumes developed into a complex system of notation that used individual neumes as single notes or as many as four notes in a particular sequence 

Neumes         Look at chart on the backHeighted Neumes        

Def: Neumes whose pitch relationship is represented on a page         10^th century         Now could identify intervals        Horizontal line used to fix an absolute pitch as reference

Two Line Notation         

Same as single line neume notation but with two lines         

The lines represented the pitches C and F         C and F represented the beginning and middle of an 8 note scaleGuido of Arrezo         Italian Monk who suggested the use of four horizontal lines         11th and 12th centuries         Placed letters at the beginnings of the lines in their appropriate places for pitch reference (later became the names of the various clefs)         

Also created a device for students to use for singing called the Guidonian hand to help them remember a particular pitch         

This device uses the entire handFranco of Cologne         First to try and notate note values (lengths of notes)         

Based on sets of three (triple meter)         

Long notes were equal to three of the shorter value         

Neumes with length notation were called ligatures 

Franconian Notationq         Long =  q         Breve = q         Semibreve = Petronian Notation         

Petrus de Cruce (Pierre de la Croix) refined the Franconian system         Allowed for greater subdivision of the breve         minim  divides semibreve into thirds or halfs        

 semiminim  always equal to half a minimPetronian Notation Chart         minim =          semiminim = 

Philippe de Vitry         Created the Ars Nova        

 Expanded the Franconian system       

Wrote the notes in a circle or half circle         14^th century15th  17th Centuries   

Modern time signatures were created        

Bar lines, expression signs, Italian terms for tempo and dynamics were introduced in the 17^th century        

 Major and minor modes and key signatures created Modern Notation         

By 1700  staves using five lines are official         

Accidentals are introducedContemporary Notation         The 20th century marked a new turn in music         

Extra musical sounds (screams with bows, horse whines with trumpets, harmonics with reed instruments)        

 New notations with squiggly lines and weird dynamics