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WRITING MUSIC DOWN
ALCUIN AND THE CAROLINGIAN RENAISSANCE
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Early musical notation
3
Remembering Plainchant
When Charlemagne ordered that all the churches and
monasteries in his empire sang Plainchant in the same
manner, the only way the priests, monks and nuns
could learn it was by listening to other singers and
copying them. This is why it took approximately 50
years for Charlemagne’s command to take effect
across the whole empire.
Once they had learned the Plainchant, the singers had
to be able to remember it. Because they relied on
their memories so much, it is likely that their memories
were better than many of ours today. Even so, as
more and more Plainchant was added to the liturgy, it
became harder and harder for the priests, monks and
nuns to remember everything.
If you have difficulty remembering something, what do
you do? Probably the same as the Carolingian monks
– write it down. The Carolingian monks already had
books containing all the words for their Plainchant,
but they also needed to show the twists and turns of
the melody. Writing down music is called ‘notation’.
We do not know exactly when notation was first
invented. Some people believe it existed as long ago
as the seventh century. The oldest surviving
Plainchant notation, however, dates between 825 and
850 – which is after the deaths of both Alcuin and
Charlemagne.
Neumes
In order to write down their music, the Carolingians used signs drawn
above the words. These are sometimes known as ‘neumes’. The signs
told the singers whether the next note was higher or lower than the
previous one. They also showed how many notes to sing to one syllable.
Twinkle, twinkle little star.
To the right are the words for a song you probably know, with signs
written above the first half of the tune to show the direction of the
melody. Use the key below to help you, and try to add signs to the rest
of the song.
Up above the world so high,
Key:
Melody goes up
Melody goes down
Melody remains on the same note
How I wonder what you are.
Like a diamond in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle little star.
How I wonder what you are.
To the left is another well-known song, with signs above the words.
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday dear Alcuin,
Happy birthday to you.
Look at lines one and two. Apart from the first word in each line, the signs
above the notes follow the same pattern above each of the words. When
you sing the first two lines of ‘Happy Birthday’, do you sing exactly the
same notes? If not, which words do you sing to different notes each time?
You probably worked out that the notes we sing on the words ‘to you’ are
higher in pitch in line two. It is not possible, however, to discover this from
the ‘neumes’ written above the notes. You only know this because you
already know the tune.
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WRITING MUSIC DOWN
ALCUIN AND THE CAROLINGIAN RENAISSANCE
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Early musical notation
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Think about notation using neumes and answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the following questions:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Does
Does
Does
Does
Does
Does
the
the
the
the
the
the
notation
notation
notation
notation
notation
notation
tell
tell
tell
tell
tell
tell
you
you
you
you
you
you
which words to sing?
whether the melody goes up or down?
how many syllables to sing to each note?
whether a note is long or short?
exactly how much higher or lower each note should be?
exactly on which note to start the melody?
As you can see from your answers to the questions,
Neumes are useful if you have learned the music from
memory, and need a reminder of how the tune goes,
but neumes cannot tell you exactly what the melody is
if you do not know it already. Because neumes were
only useful if you already knew the Plainchant, many
different systems for writing neumes grew up across
Europe. Monks could not send a manuscript
containing neumes to another monastery and expect
the monks there to be able to sing the Plainchant if
they had never heart it before. For this, another kind
of notation was needed.
Daseian notation
Download and listen to ‘Rex caeli’ (a). This is part of a piece of
Plainchant. Practise singing the first phrase: ‘Rex caeli, Domine
maris undisoni’. Trace the shape of the phrase with your hand;
when the music goes higher, move your hand up and move
your hand down as the music goes lower. What shape did you
draw in the air? Draw the shape in the box on the right.
Now download and listen to ‘Rex caeli’ (2). This
contains the whole piece of Plainchant. How many
people are singing? Are they singing the same
pitches, or different ones?
This kind of music is called organum. Because two
different parts are singing at the same time, it
becomes more important to know exactly what
pitches each part should sing. Musicians devised a
kind of notation called ‘daseian notation’. It is
printed in a book called Musica Enchiriadis from the
early 10th century, now in the British Library. Below
is an example of what it looks like in the original
manuscript, together with a ‘modern’ version.
The shape made by the words of the top line in this
line. If a word is written on the ‘C’ line, it means the
picture probably looks similar to the shape you drew singer should sing a ‘C’ to those words, if the word is
when you learned the melody. The letters on the left- on the ‘A’ line, then the singer sings an ‘A’.
hand side show which pitches are represented by each
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WRITING MUSIC DOWN
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Now answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the same questions we asked about ‘neumes’
•
•
•
•
•
•
Does
Does
Does
Does
Does
Does
the
the
the
the
the
the
notation
notation
notation
notation
notation
notation
tell
tell
tell
tell
tell
tell
you
you
you
you
you
you
which words to sing?
whether the melody goes up or down?
how many syllables to sing to each note?
whether a note is long or short?
exactly how much higher or lower each note should be?
exactly on which note to start the melody?
You probably found that you answered more ‘yes’ to
more questions this time.
This kind of notation takes up a very large amount of
space in the manuscript. Manuscripts were usually
written on ‘vellum’. This is a kind of parchment made
If you were a monk in the 10th century, and another
from the skin of an animal. Because vellum was very
monk sent you a manuscript written in this type of
expensive to produce, manuscript writers wanted to fit
notation, do you think you would be able to work out as much music onto one page as they possibly could.
how to sing it even if you had never heard the piece Even though daseian notation is very accurate, it was
before?
not used very much because it was too expensive to
write out every piece of Plainchant this way.
There is a serious disadvantage of this type of
notation. Can you think what it is?
Developments in plainchant notation
Around the beginning of the 11th century, a new
system of notation was developed that effectively
combined neumes and daseian notation. It was
invented by a man called Guido d’Arezzo.
high or low each note should be. One of the lines
was marked with a letter ‘C’ to show which line
represented the note ‘C’. The words were written
underneath.
Instead of writing the words on separate lines, Guido
used ‘signs’ – square ‘dots’. He placed each dot
either on or between four parallel lines to show how
Below is a piece of Plainchant written in notation
developed from Guido’s invention. Download and
listen to the piece and try to follow the signs.
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WRITING MUSIC DOWN
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Early musical notation
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Interpret the signs
Study the Plainchant notation on page 3. Can you work out what each sign means?
Draw the correct sign in each box below, next to the words explaining what it means, and try singing the
music yourself.
Sing one note
Sing two notes to one syllable. The first note is higher than the second.
Sing two notes to one syllable. The first note is lower than the second.
Make this note longer than the others
Sing this note a little more strongly
Now answer yes or no to the same questions we asked about ‘neumes’ and daseain notation
•
•
•
•
•
•
Does
Does
Does
Does
Does
Does
the
the
the
the
the
the
notation
notation
notation
notation
notation
notation
tell
tell
tell
tell
tell
tell
you
you
you
you
you
you
which words to sing?
whether the melody goes up or down?
how many syllables to sing to each note?
whether a note is long or short?
exactly how much higher or lower each note should be?
exactly on which note to start the melody?
You should have answered ‘yes’ to each of these questions. This type of notation is still used for Plainchant
today. It is quite similar to the type of notation we use for most Western music.
Limitations of Plainchant notation
There is one thing this notation does not do, and that
is show precisely how long or short each note should
be (the rhythm of the music). Because Plainchant
follows the rhythm of the words, it is not really
necessary to show this but later forms of music did
need to show precise rhythm, and musicians invented
a system to do this. If you can read music, you will
probably know something about this already.
Image on page 3 copyright the British Library. Reproduced with permission
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