The Development of Western Music Notation

Music has been around for a very long time. Long before mankind even began a written history of their lives, there was music. And long before the development of the treble clef, music notation had to begin somewhere.

Prehistoric Music Notation

At the earliest point in known music history, music notation did not exist. People played music made from sticks and rocks, imitating sounds of nature to create prehistoric art. Check out this post I wrote about Prehistoric era music for more information.

Ancient Tablets

The beginning of music notation came with literacy. As the Ancient Romans and Greeks observed the world around them, they developed a reading and writing system as a way to grow and learn. And their studies of math and science led to further developments in music. Pythagoras, for example, figured out the mathematical pattern of the octave scale. And Aristotle created one of the first systems of notating music.

The earliest type of music notation is in the form of a cuneiform tablet (cuneiform is one of the earliest systems of writing). This notation system consisted of symbols written above the text to mark pitches. The Seikilos epitaph is the oldest surviving complete musical composition with this type of musical notation still intact.

Written sometime between 200 BCE and 100 CE, the Seikilos epitaph was found engraved on a tombstone in present-day Turkey. Read more about it here!

Medieval Monks

Aside from the cuneiform system used by the Greeks, much of music was handed down by oral tradition. Fast forward a few hundred years, though, and the rise of the Medieval era brought the development of neums around the 9th century. A neum is the basic unit of Western music notation (a.k.a. a musical note or symbol).

The earliest neums were markings that showed the general shape of the melody to be sung (because of course most music being written down at this time was Catholic church chant). Like the cuneiform tablets, the monks wrote symbols above the text. These symbols typically signified changes in pitch; if the line above the word rises, then the pitch while singing that word also rises.

The Musical Staff

As time passed, music notation began developing more as the oral tradition of teaching music became less common. In the 11th century, neums were written at varying distances to each other, signifying intervals between the pitches sung. Sometimes, a line was used to indicate a specific pitch.

Then came a monk named Guido de Arezzo (ca 991-1033).

As the story goes, Guido was unimpressed with the church’s ability to easily teach young children their chants. So he incorporated a four-line staff to be placed in the music with the neums to more clearly mark pitches. Guido then marked one of the lines on the staff as the “key indicator” – such as a C or an F – to indicate that pitch’s fixed position on the lines (these were early clef markings – later standardized to G in the treble clef and F in the bass clef). He also colored the lines to make it easy for young students to read the music (i.e. the C line was yellow and F was red).

Marking Rhythm

The next step in music notation: developing a system to determine note length. During the Medieval era, while the musical staff was first being used, the church used a set of 6 rhythmic patterns for all of their chants. Enter Franco of Cologne, a German music theorist. He wrote a paper in the 13th century explaining his idea of mensural notation, or music notation that also measures time. He suggested that individual notes could have their own rhythms based on the shape of the neum!

Mensural notation started out in the 13th century with just a few neums, where the specific note length was determined in the context of the music itself. Over the next few centuries, however, musicians developed mensural notation to become a standardized set of note lengths.

Time signatures were also developed at this time to help guide the singers to know how long to hold each neum.

Modern Music Notation

Over the Renaissance and Baroque eras, instrumental music began its rise as chant became less popular. As the church started losing power and local noble families became more prominent, these wealthy patrons hired instrumentalists to play in their courts. The development of the printing press allowed for all people to have access to music in their own homes, which also fostered an increase of instrumentalists. Over time, barlines, standardized clefs, dynamic markings, and articulations appeared to help performers understand how to play the music. 

Chord symbols are one modern development of music notation that allows for freedom in musical structure. And contemporary composers often make specific markings in their scores to help performers understand how to play the music. This is the amazing thing about music notation. It is constantly growing and developing as composers find ways to express themselves.