Name ____________________________________________ Date ________________
The Evolution of Musical Notation Worksheet
Epitaph of Seikilos
• Earliest record of written music
• 1st 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
q Look at chart on the back
Heighted Neumes
• Def: Neumes whose pitch relationship is represented on a page
• 10th 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 scale
Guido 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 hand
Franco 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 Notation
q 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 minim
Petronian Notation Chart
q minim =
q semiminim =
Philippe de Vitry
• Created the Ars Nova
• Expanded the Franconian system
• Wrote the notes in a circle or half circle
• 14th century
15th – 17th Centuries
• Modern time signatures were created
• Bar lines, expression signs, Italian terms for tempo and dynamics were introduced in the 17th century
• Major and minor modes and key signatures created
Modern Notation
• By 1700 – staves using five lines are official
• Accidentals are introduced
Contemporary 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
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