The images referenced throughout this short tour of early musical notations provide visual examples of very different practices. Before we begin, I want to make clear that there was not a single, unified path of notational development, but that various people in different places developed their own techniques and tools, and that very different local practices existed. All of these early forms rely on memory to a greater or lesser extent: they are mnemonic devices to help the singer remember a tune that they have sung before, perhaps many times previously.

The earliest known examples of Western musical notation are of what we call “non-diastematic neumes”. Neumes, as we have covered in class, represent groups of notes, or melodic gestures with a single graphic symbol, typically tracing the pitch changes in the group through the shape of the written symbol. Though the shape of the neume replicates the shape of the melodic gesture, the various neumes in these early examples are not consistently placed on the page in a way that shows their relationship to one another. This is what we mean by non-diastematic. In diastematic notation, the height of the notation shows the relative pitch. Here are two examples.

This first example comes from one of the oldest surviving complete compilations of mass chants. It comes from the Cathedral in Laon in France, and has been dated to the last quarter of the ninth century, that is from 875-900 CE. Here, for purposes of comparison, is a transcription into modern notation, completed by the musicologist Susan Rankin.

Here is a second example, from Germany, which has been dated (through carbon dating of the wooden covers) to 923-931. And here is a transcription (again, by Dr. Rankin).

Looking at these two examples, (I hope) you can see that there is no staff, and it is not necessarily clear what the relationship is between the various neumes. Dr. Rankin points out that these two different examples use different symbols, but also that they use the symbols to point up important features of the recitation that do not necessarily rely on pitch, though they do show gestural shapes, and similarities between various musical phrases.

A huge change in notational practices was promulgated by the Italian monk, Guido d’Arezzo, who copied out his treatise, Micrologus, sometime before 1033. Guido was particularly interested in the placement of the semitone and in ways to make the singer aware of where the semitone was located, and thus better able to sightread music and to sing in tune. One of his important contributions was the invention of solfege, the other, was the use of ruled colored lines to show the placement of C and of F (and thus of the semitones below them). Guido ruled F in red and C in yellow, and also placed small letters at the start of each colored line, which today are retained as the F (or bass) clef and the C (or alto) clef. In this example, from the late 12th century, we can see the F line and thus a very precise location of the neumes and notes in relation to the diatonic scale.

Eventually, in this example from at least the early thirteenth century, the staff has standardised into four very clear lines. You can see the F clef marked with a quill pen at the left-most margin. Later this shape was stylized further into a swooping upright and two dots to mark the arms of the F, and the modern bass clef was born.