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The little story of musical notation 2/4December 2nd, 2008
During the first episode of this little story of musical notation, we were mainly focused on Greeks. Following this tradition, the western medieval musical notation was first alphabetic. Octaves were labeled in uppercase and lowercase letters: The uppercase letter (A) indicated the first octave, the lowercase letter (a) the second one, the doubled lowercase letter (aa) the third. This notation was not much used and was rapidly replaced from the IXth century by neumes.
The first manuscripts in which neumes are written down, date from VIIIth and IXth centuries and come from Aquitaine. Neumes are a set of signs written above the text, indicating the direction of melodic curves and enabling the cantor to remember a melody already memorized.
In a general manner, neumes are graphic elements inspired from accents used by grammarians. The first forms of neumes were said aligned and took the form of grave or acute accents.
The etymological origin of the word “neume” is ambiguous. Indeed, it can signify πνεύμα “pneuma” (breath) as well as νεύμα “neuma”, the sign. One could think that, as a sign, the neume represented the choirmaster’s signs.
Little by little, the number of neumes used increased to reach a total of 8 (Punctum and Virga, Clivis (or Flexa), Podatus (or Pes), Climacus, Scandicus and Salicus, Torculus, Porrectus) to which were added special neumes (Quilisma, Stropha or Strophicus, Pressus, Bivirga, Trigon, Oriscus for example) informing about ornamentation or interpretation. Other conventional signs came to complete this notation, leading to the classic list of neumes. This notation well describes the rhythm and gives coarse indications on the melodic line, but not on the pitch or intervals. The musical notation thus was not a vector of propagation, which remained mainly oral, and was more like an aide-mémoire.
02/21/10 - 10:23
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