Download inventing western music notation, inventing western music

By Ronald Broude
INVENTING WESTERN MUSIC NOTATION,
INVENTING WESTERN MUSIC
How early notation acted upon both the music
it represented and the musical system we inherited
T
Western music
notation was long regarded as one of
more or less steady progress in developing means to describe more and more of
the elements that make up our music.
Seen in terms of this model, the most
primitive forms of Western notation
were the various systems of neumes, the
earliest extant examples of which date
from early in the 9th century. In their
simplest form, neumes were symbols
placed above verbal texts to indicate
whether a syllable was to be intoned
higher or lower than the preceding
syllable; such neumes could indicate
the direction of a melody but not the
specific pitches or intervals involved.
The next step in the development of
notation was understood to be the staff,
a primitive form of which appeared
around the middle of the 9th century.
The staff, it was thought, began to
evolve from neumes when a horizontal
line representing a specific pitch—a
pitch of reference, so to speak—was
introduced into the open field occupied
by the neumes. Later, a second line
representing a second pitch was added,
and it seemed obvious that the intro duction of enough such lines had
produced staffs that could represent
specific pitches—or rather an array of
sounds separated by specific intervals,
since pitch in the sense of A-440 was
not yet at issue. With the passage of
centuries, notation would be able to
indicate duration, dynamic level, tempi
and, eventually, all the many elements
for which musicians have sought
guidance or over which composers have
claimed the right to exercise control.
This simple history is no longer widely accepted. There was a considerable
period during which neumes and staves
HE HISTORY OF
co-existed, and in some cases neumes
did indicate pitch. The principle that
underlies the staff—a horizontal axis
representing the passage of time and a
vertical axis marked off to indicate a diatonic series of tones—was understood
by the mid-800s, yet neumes continued
in use for centuries afterwards, and it
was only in the 11th century that Guido
d’Arezzo devised and promoted the
form of the staff that would come to be
the dominant form of Western music
notation. Progress—in the sense of a
steady succession of improvements—is
not in question here. The first two centuries in the history of Western notation
are perhaps best understood as a period
of simultaneously conducted experiments, undertaken by people who had
differing aims in view, whose contacts
with each other were determined by factors that often had little to do with
music, and who sometimes borrowed
ideas from each others’ experiments.
It is reassuring to think that staff
notation enables us to trace the process
by which the music of twelve centuries
ago became our music. In fact, however,
Western European music of the 8th and
9th centuries CE is very much a mystery, for extant documentation is too
sparse to describe it in sufficient detail.
The only Western music from that age
about which we have much information
is the music of the Roman Church; we
know virtually nothing about other
European musics of the day. And other
musics there must have been: the population of Western Europe in the central
Middle Ages was so ethnically diverse
that its musical culture must have been
A sample of Gregorian chant written at the
St. Gall scriptorium around the year 1000.
Early Music America Summer 2012
43
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quite varied, reflecting the traditions not notation identifies as meriting represenonly of peoples who had long occupied tation and to which a symbol is assigned
can be recorded. An element for which a
territories securely under Roman influence but also of peoples who had more notation does not have a symbol cannot
be recorded by that notation, or, if it is
recently joined Western Christendom,
bringing their musics with them, as well recorded, it must be recorded as if it
were something for which there is a
as peoples—like the Muslims of the
symbol; in the process, the nature
Iberian peninsula and North Africa—
of that element will have been transwho lived on the borders of Christenformed. And we know what can happen
dom and whose music may have influenced that of their Christian neighbors. when we transcribe a music that cannot
We might suppose that early forms of be easily represented by our notation: it
Western notation were transparent, set- must be simplified or distorted, sometimes almost beyond recognition. This is
ting down in writing music that had
been there all along, waiting to be notat- a problem with which ethnomusicologists have long been
ed. However, the history of writing in the
The invention of printing familiar; 60 years ago,
Charles Seeger called
West suggests that
transformed the ways in
for a descriptive notathis is most unlikely.
which people processed tion that would be
Technological innovaand consumed information. more accessible than
tion in text—and
There is no reason
waves on graph paper
musical notation is a
but more discriminatspecies of text—
to suppose that the
ing than the staff we
seems usually to be
relationship between
use now.
accompanied by
the sacred music of the 9th
With this principle in
alterations in what
and 10th centuries and its mind, we will undertext records. The
notation should be an
stand that surviving
introduction of writexception to this rule.
examples of early staff
ing in Ancient Greece
notation enable us to
changed how people
recover certain aspects of the music they
thought, as Eric Havelock has shown;
record, but that there is no guarantee
the invention of printing transformed
the ways in which people processed and that those examples offer an adequate or
objective representation of what was
consumed information, as Elizabeth
actually performed. Moreover, if a notaEisenstein has demonstrated; and the
digital revolution through which we are tion is tendentious—say, if it is generated by a particular theory of music—it is
living today is producing shifts in our
likely to record what is consistent with
cognitive processes that are the subject
of a massive and still growing literature. that theory while ignoring what is not—
or else modifying it to make it consistent
There is no reason to suppose that
with the theory. To the extent that early
the relationship between the sacred
music of the 9th and 10th centuries and staff notation reflects a particular theoretical system, its representations of
the notation by which it was representmusic cannot be regarded as objective or
ed should be an exception to this rule,
for music notation does more than sim- accurate. Under such conditions, what
ply describe; it also defines and limits. A notation will have produced will be not
a description of the music that was pernotational system, whether it be an
alphabet that represents phonemes or a formed but a music that has been
musical notation that represents abstract defined by a notation.
The ancient Greeks and Romans had
sounds, operates by breaking down its
subject into a manageably small array of forms of music notation, but those
forms seem to have fallen into disuse,
elements, to each of which it assigns a
probably even before the political
symbol. Only an element that such a
collapse of the Roman Empire in the 5th
century CE. When in the 9th century
(or perhaps late in the 8th) the Christian
West felt a need to notate its music, it
was necessary to devise new notations.
It is generally understood that the (re-)
invention of musical notations in the
9th century was part of a larger concern
with systematizing music, and that
impetus for this concern came from the
cultural flowering that we call the Carolingian Renaissance. By the last decade
of the 8th century, Charlemagne had
assembled an empire that spanned
much of Europe, and to govern his farflung and diverse subjects, he needed
literate bureaucrats. To create a bureaucracy on the scale required to administer
so vast a realm, Charlemagne needed
institutions of learning, and these he
greatly encouraged and generously supported. In this project, he found a willing and useful ally in the Roman
Church: its schools were centers of
learning, its libraries repositories of
learned works, and its scriptoria factories for multiplying copies of those
works. A climate arose that fostered
learning and that placed value on
texts—on written documents recording
statutes, treaties, transfers of property
and similar instruments of government
and law. Charlemagne died in 814, but
even though his empire soon disintegrated, respect for texts and for the
learning needed to inscribe and to read
them remained strong long after his
death.
The beginnings of Western musical
notation were part of a larger concern
with text that was generated by the
revived interest in learning. The decades
and centuries that followed the Carolingian Renaissance were years of experimentation in the management of text
with the intent that the activities of writing and reading might be carried on
more efficiently; a history of this process
has been written by Paul Saenger (Space
Between Words: The Origins of Silent
Reading, Stanford University Press,
1997). The world into which Charlemagne had been born had been a world
in which most reading of verbal texts
was done aloud and to listeners; silent
reading to oneself would not become
widespread until the 12th and 13th
centuries. Reading was a laborious
process of decoding texts written in
scriptura continua, a form of writing consisting of uninterrupted strings of letters;
word separation would not become a
norm until the 11th and 12th centuries.
To aid in the difficult task of vocalizing
texts, various markings (called prosodiae)
had been added to minimize confusion
and to cue readers realizing texts vocally.
Over the course of several centuries,
responsibility for conveying the ideas
embodied in texts shifted from the readers who decoded texts to the scribes
who prepared them. It is within this
context of experimentation with the
graphic representation of sound in order
to produce more reader-friendly texts
that the beginnings of Western musical
notation must be seen.
The musical notations devised in the
9th and 10th centuries responded to the
needs of two different constituencies,
those who performed music and those
who wrote about the principles that
were thought to underlie what was
being performed. The evidence we have
makes it clear that there were important
discrepancies not only between practice
and theory but between theory and
theory.
Music theory was one of the disciplines to benefit from the Carolingian
revival of learning. Recognized as one of
the seven liberal arts, music was studied
as part of the Quadrivium, which consisted of the “mathematical arts” of
arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and
music. But a Quadrivium student studying music was not learning how to sing
or to play an instrument; he was learning the mathematical basis of music,
and in studying music he was concerned more with theory than with
practice, more with numbers than with
performance.
Although Medieval Christianity had
traditionally regarded the thinkers and
writers of pre-Christian antiquity with
suspicion, those same thinkers and
writers enjoyed immense prestige during
the “barbarian” centuries that followed
the Roman Empire’s collapse. The musical system that the Greco-Roman world
had elaborated and about which it theorized was a system that was based on
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Continued on page 57
Early Music America Summer 2012
45
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agreed that their system reflected the
fundamental principles of music and
that, therefore, the music of their day
Continued from page 45
should conform to that system. The litand more complex than the one we use erature of the time contains its share of
the same principles of acoustics that
today. It was simpler in the sense that it querulous and pedantic complaints
underlie our own system: it was based
about bad practice and failure to adhere
divided the octave into only eight parts
on a limited number of pitches bearing
to recognized rules—as well as strategies
(the white notes on a piano plus B is
relatively simple mathematical relationfor circumventing those rules. That such
ships to each other. During the last cen- the way the system is often described)
turies of the Empire and those that foland because its range spanned less than strategies were required suggests how far
apart theory and practice were.
lowed, interest in Classical music theothree octaves. It was more complex
Staff notation was from the first a
ry—and constructive understanding of
because it organized these parts into varit—seems to have waned; during these
ious overlapping categories—e.g., tetra- notation that reflected the musical sysyears there were certainly writers who
chords, hexachords, and modes—which tems that 9th- and 10th-century theorists were propounding. The earliest
wrote about music using Greek and
both individually and in combination
extant appearance of staff notation—or
Roman models—or, rather, who retailed
a primitive form thereof—occurs not in
The literature of the time
the ideas of Classical authorities—but it
a musical source but in an anonymous
is far from certain that all of them
contains its share of pedantic
manual, Musica enchiriadis, which is
understood exactly what they were
complaints about failure to
thought to have been written around the
explaining. When in the 9th century
adhere to recognized rules—
middle of the 9th century and of which
musical theorists turned their attention
as well as strategies for
the earliest extant copy is found in a
to these writings, they were obliged to
circumventing those rules.
manuscript generally agreed to date
reconcile the theories they found with
from before 900: the notation is used
That such strategies were
the thought and practices that had
grown up in the intervening years and
required suggests how far apart for musical examples illustrating points
the writer wishes to make. The Musica
that shaped the music of the 9th-centutheory and practice were.
enchiriadis staff consists of an array of
ry Western Church. Charles Atkinson, in
horizontal lines, each of which is identiThe Critical Nexus (Oxford University
imposed serious limitations on the forPress, 2008), has traced the process by
mation of melodies. In theory, a musical fied as representing both a pitch and a
degree of the scale. The verbal text,
which the theorists of this era created a entity (we cannot call such entities
synthesis of Classical and Christian
“works”) was confined within an octave divided into syllables, is distributed
ideas. It is clear from Atkinson’s history (although this range might in certain cir- from left to right, each syllable being
that creating an acceptable synthesis
cumstances be extended) and could use inserted in the space above the line representing the pitch at which it is to be
was not an orderly process. There was
only notes belonging to the mode to
sung; it is resting on the line. A similar
confusion about what Classical authori- which the principal tone (the “final”)
“proto-staff” staff—this one with fewer
ties had thought, and there were trouand range assigned it. No provision for
lines and without designations of specifbling discrepancies between 9th-century accidentals existed.
practice and what 9th-century theorists
The theorists who had contributed to ic pitches—is to be found in Hucbald’s
De harmonia institutione (c.900). Such
understood Classical authorities to have this system insisted on the importance
staffs were a powerful analytical tool for
written.
of an intellectual understanding of the
The musical system that had emerged principles that underlie music. And,
by the 11th century was not exactly the notwithstanding the inevitable disagreeA page from Musica enchiriadis (c.900)
system that we now understand the
ments among themselves, they were
showing the pitches as syllables on a staff.
ancient Greeks to have developed, nor
was it quite the one that retailers such
as Boethius and Martianus Capella had
tried to describe. From Classical theory
as it reached them, 9th- and 10th-century theorists had selected some elements,
ignored others, and misinterpreted still
others. It would not be the only time in
the history of music that an attempt to
revive Classical practice produced something new and different: half a millennium later, opera would be the product of
a similar misprision.
This new system was both simpler
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the staff and, therefore, to the theoretithose writing about music, but they
cal system that the staff projected. As
were not practical for performers. Seen
musical literacy increased, notated
in terms of the physiology of reading,
music was more often preserved and
these staffs required the eye to distinmore widely disseminated, and such
guish among a number of identical
forms—lines separated by spaces—cov- music was therefore the music that was
most often performed and heard. With
ering a substantial vertical span. The
music represented by such a staff could the passage of time, this notated music
—and the system that generated it—
be studied, but it could not be quickly
came to seem more and more familiar,
and easily read.
more and more natural.
It was not until around 1025 that
Metaphorically, staff notation acted as
Guido d’Arezzo proposed a staff in
a gatekeeper to the future, determining
which pitches would be represented
what would be allowed to pass through
alternately by lines and spaces with at
and what would not. It is difficult to say
least one of the lines identified as to
pitch, either by a letter placed to its left what was not allowed to pass through,
for much of what did
or by its being drawn
in a color. Guido’s
It may seem at first glance not pass through
must be assumed to
staff is the direct
that Guido’s staff—like
ancestor of the staffs
our own staff—provides an have been lost. Some
musicologists believe
we use today.
objective mechanism for repthat some systems of
A staff that covered the almost-three resenting sound. In fact, it is neumes have symanything but objective.
bols representing
octaves recognized
quartertones, and if
by 11th-century thethis is so, then quartertones formed part
ory would still require the reader to
of at least some of the musical cultures
negotiate an inconvenient number of
lines and spaces, but the limitations on of the day. But the smallest interval represented by the staff is a semitone, and
the range that a melody might cover
quartertones—or any other microtone—
made staffs with fewer lines—first four,
had no formal place in our musical syslater five—practical.
tem until composers began to question
It may seem at first glance that Guido’s staff—like our own staff—provides the limits of that system many centuries
an objective mechanism for representing later.
It is clear that early staff notation had
sound. In fact, it is anything but objective, for its conventions rely on a partic- difficulty managing nonsystemic accidentals, inflections occurring at places
ular musical system, i.e., a specific
in the gamut at which orthodox theory
sequence of tones and semitones. The
smallest interval represented by the staff said they should not. There were certainly chants that contained significant
is the semitone, and if the staff were a
numbers of such anomalies. If an
neutral analytic tool, the distance from
line to line in the earlier staffs and from extended passage or an entire chant
line to space or space to line in Guido’s contained several anomalies, it could
be notated only by removing those
staff would invariably represent a semianomalies—and thereby by changing
tone. Instead, however, the distance
its character. If it went unnotated, it
from space to space or from line to
would suffer the uncertain fate of being
space represents sometimes a tone (as
from F to G) and sometimes a semitone transmitted orally.
We know that some anomalies did
(as from E to F). If one does not know
not disappear but persisted in the twithe musical system represented by the
light of orality, calling out for means to
staff, the staff cannot be read correctly.
As staff notation became the notation notate them. Already in the 9th century,
the author of Musica enchiriadis was
of choice, a distinct advantage accrued
speaking of vitia (blemishes, imperfecto music that could be represented on
tions or corruptions), and there was an
awareness of “problem chants”—familiar entities that did not quite fit into the
system but that were too securely established in the repertoire to be dismissed
and were persisting in oral traditions.
Eventually, but over a period measured
in decades and centuries, modifications
were made to the notation to accommodate such problem chants. Eventually,
for example, a means of representing
accidentals was introduced. There also
developed informal conventions for performing anomalies, for accepting the fiction that notation specifying one thing
might in certain circumstances be realized as if it meant something else; thus
were created situations in which a notation so stubbornly committed to a theory at variance with practice institutionalized the means for getting around that
notation. But one cannot escape the
conclusion that in such circumstances,
much music was so altered in transcription that we will never know what it was
like before it was notated. And, of
course, some was never notated at all.
During the early years of music notation, the most promising rivals of the
staff were the various systems of neumes
developed in different musical centers
around Europe. Notionally, neumes are
a species of prosodiae, markings that
supplement the information provided by
the letters of verbal texts: the letters carry the content of an utterance, the prosodiae clarify the manner of delivery.
Employed in connection with musical
texts, they could, depending upon the
system, indicate such musical elements
as pitch, relative duration, or articulation. That neumes were used as widely
and as long as they were—notwithstanding the presence of the staff—suggests that they were regarded as a superior form of notation for some repertoires. After all, neumes were sufficiently
indeterminate to accommodate much
that staff notation could not, and this
would certainly have been an advantage
for repertoires consisting of music that
did not fit neatly into the system that
staff notation represented.
Despite all the information that
neumes could convey, staff notation
proved in the end the preferred notational system. For both theorists and
those directly concerned with performance, representing specific pitches and
intervals must have seemed so important that they were prepared to forego
the other information that neumes
could convey. And elements of neume
notation were in fact incorporated into
early staffs.
In comparison with neumes, the staff
had the advantage of representing
music—i.e., melodic line—as having an
independent identity. Neumes were
creatures of the verbal text, inhabiting
the spaces between lines of words; they
had no significance independent of verbal texts. With the staff, music gained a
domain of its own, a domain from
which the verbal text was excluded and
to which it was visually subordinated by
being placed beneath the staff. Because
they were both visually and functionally
subservient to the verbal texts, neumes
were simply less forceful in projecting,
visually and with precision, the musical
system that staff notation represented.
And it was that musical system that
staff notation was expected to project.
As staff notation became the preferred
means by which music was recorded
and transmitted, that is just what it did.
Eventually, staff notation would enjoy a
near monopoly on recording and transmitting music, and as it did so, the
musical system it represented gained a
similar monopoly. As for the musics that
had been there before the reinvention of
notation—the “official” musics of the
Western Church, the regional sacred
musics, the secular musics employing
the same or similar systems, and musics
both sacred and secular of peoples
employing other musical systems—we
are unlikely ever to be able to do more
than speculate.
If the process of bringing notation
and music into agreement was lengthy,
it was probably not so much a matter
of refining the notation as of simplifying the music so that the notation
could accommodate it. In a real sense,
then, the resulting music—and our
own, which is descended from it—was
an artifact of that notation.
I
Known to EMAg readers as a publisher and
former EMA board member, Ronald Broude is
also a board member and former executive
director of the Society for Textual Scholarship.
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