Each sign written by the composer has a global meaning. Each performer has a different approach of the same sign. In other words, notation gives us a certain flexibility, a tiny space of freedom. We have to define the exact meaning of the sign, according to our taste, to the context, to the historical background and the composer himself.

Now let’s consider a practical example. A dot above or below a musical note indicates that you are to play the note staccato. The composer signifies an unconnected note, which is short and detached. Yes, but how short? The shortest possible or just short? This is what the interpreter has to define. The concept of length is very relative: some will play the note very short and others will opt for a less dry staccato. The result in both cases is completely different and will affect the global conception of the work: there will be a different interpretation of the sign resulting in a different interpretation of the whole work.

Each composer has a very clear idea of the musical result he wants. Part of his job is to transcribe this idea in a “universal” language, using a notation understood by all musicians. This notation often turns out to be semantically vague and reflects only part of the composer’s intention. The composer can then clarify his toughts by adding annotations or other signs, but this can sometimes overload the score with information, making it difficult to read. He can also let the interpreter deduce the accurate meaning of a sign used in the specific context of his work. So, the interpreter must always put in perspective what the composer wrote and can not accept notation at face value: it is a basis of interpretive work. Remember: a dot means staccato, yes, but what kind of staccato?

When collaborating with composers, it often happens that your interpretation is very different from the composer’s idea. We are obviously reading the same text, the same signs, but our idea of the musical result is completely different. We can not say that the interpreter is wrong, nor that the composer has written things in a wrong way: our perspectives are different, period. The composer then explains his intentions in order to make the interpreter better understand his music. And that’s so much easier when the composer is still living!

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As we have already discussed it a few weeks ago, we won’t go back on the history of notation. However I advise you to refresh your memory by (re) reading the articles about the development of musical notation. They are available at:

1. The little story of musical notation 1/4
2. The little story of musical notation 2/4
3. The little story of musical notation 3/4
4. The little story of musical notation 4/4

The score is an act of communication to the interpreter. By writing a score, the composer wants to make his music able to be played by someone else, codifying it with a special notation. Like any transcription, it may be accurate on some points but also very relative on others. While duration and pitch of sounds are, in itself, easely measurable, the nuances and attacks remain at the discretion of the performer.

The partition is a set of signs printed on paper or screen, called notation and enabling performers to reproduce the composition using instruments or voices designated by the composer. The composer has encoded the music he wants to be heard in the form of conventional symbols.

Although some data appear qualitatively and quantitatively well defined, we can not only consider a simple reading of the score and play exactly what is written. Who would play a score of Chopin respecting blindly the written rhythm? The result would probably sound awkward and far from the composer’s world and rubato that he wished the performer to achieve. This simple example illustrates the relativity induced by a notation appearing clear and objective: the score is entirely subjective, and raises rather difficult questions of interpretation without even having begun to play the first note .

It appears that interpretins a score is not an easy and repetitive task. We need as interpreters to put us in the composer’s perspective to understand the value of each sign of the score. Preliminary work on the text is therefore essential but is often neglected by interpreters. Yet this study of the score is paramount to an authentic interpretation.

In our study we will focus on three key points which have to be clarified before even beginning to play: the editorial quality of the text, the interpretation of signs and connotations associated with the text. These questions will lead us invariably to discuss the thorny issue of style in a composer’s notation.

Finally, to complete our overview of the score interpretation, we will focus on certain types of notations in the graphic scores much less common than conventional examples.

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Indeed, these signs do not appear in the neumatic notation (I might say almost not: some neumes contain them) and we have to wait until the 12th century and the Notre-Dame School before polyphonists precised the length of notes in ternary melismas. Here begins the notation said mensural. The length of the note is not set but determined by the context: 1 or 2 beats for short ones and 2 or 3 beats for long ones.

This method becomes standard and gets broader in the 13th century: form and layout specify new lengths. New types of notes are invented: squares, rounds, filled or hollowed as well as new queues (with a hook for example).

In the beginning of the 14th century, the rhythmic notation became highly elaborated (use of different colors, of signs such as circles or points) and reached a peak at the end of the same century, to finally become progressively simplified. Features from this period are still observable, for example, C and C barre, as well as numeric combinations, which became fractions indicating bars.

In the 17th century a new character appeared: the bar line, and changed everything. A new way of counting was then introduced, not 1-1-1-1 anymore, but 1-2-3-4, and therefore set the duration of notes according to the figuring.

From this time, and despite the many treaties offering an improvement in the rhythmic notation, this one has remained almost unchanged. Thanks to the non-harmonic music, the debate has recently been revived, but the proposed new types are still very experimental.

So, this is the end of our little story of musical notation, but I already promise a post following this exciting saga: I will show you soon some examples of musical notation not exactly like any other!

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Little by little, the use of this line increased, then became ink-drawn and marked with a letter corresponding to the note assigned to this line. This letter is thus the ancester of our modern keys. A bit later, a second line was added, representing the quint, then a third one, in the middle of the two first. People thus realized that each note had its own place on the “staff”. During the XIIth century, the use of a fourth line was spread, later, in the XIIIth century, a fifth one was added.

The use of the “key” fixed all intervals between notes once and for all. Yet, remained the problem of B, which was mobile and was either a half-tone lower than C or a half-tone higher than A. It had thus to be differentiated: B forming a half-tone with C was represented by a square and the other B, by a circle. This was specified, either just after the key (our actual key signature), or in the text (the origin of accidentals).

From the XIIIth century, people started using natural signs (then confused with sharps) and flats for other notes than B: F and C-sharp, and in the XIVth century, G and rarely D-sharp (does not this order remind you something?). At the beginning of the XVIth century E-flat appeared. At the end of this same century was invented chromatism, the flat-natural-sharp system has thus become without limit. It can be said that in the XVIIth century, the classical notation was fixed and won’t be subjected to many changes.

At this stage, musical writing perfectly informs on note pitches and can become a real vector of music propagation. Rhythmic notation evolves the same way, but I will come to this in a next post.

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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.

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For several thousand years, music was mostly handed down verbally without leaving a written trace. Regardless, since the origin of writing, it is possible to find some localized attempts of musical notations. A Babylonian tablet dated from the 16th century BC attests these attempts and lets us see a musical notation based on writing (alphabetic letters and grammatical accents).

By the 6th century BC, the Greeks posed the problem of notation a bit further. Alypius, whose introduction to music came to us partly, let us to get a precise idea of what the greek notation was at this time.

The greek system involved two signs for each degree of a given mode: one corresponding to an instrumental notation and another to a vocal notation.

The instrumental notation was composed of sixteen fixed signs, sorted into two octaves. In accord with theory, each sign could take three positions. According to its position, either natural, reversed (seen as in a mirror) or flattened, you had to play the sound either natural, either a half tone, or a quarter tone higher.

The vocal notation was less organized, simply constituted by the 24 letters of the greek alphabet, from alpha to omega. The Greeks, as we do, wrote musical signs above the text and the syllabs gave their length to sounds, thus avoiding use of rhytmical signs. Originally, rhythmic and metric were thus mixed together. Indeed, the vocal music occupied such a place that only the verbal aspect of musical rhythm remained. With the development of instrumental music, the rhythmic emphasized and became a discipline of its own. The greek notation system turns out to be a complex alphabetic system, mainly dealing with sounds height.

See you soon for the next part!

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