Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
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 Guntram Wolf MUSIC NOTATION Modern and historic wind instruments North American contact: Henry Skolnick Imports 7477 Hoover Ave. St. Louis, MO 63117 (314) 302-1078 [email protected] www.guntramwolf.de Ea r ly Mu s i c We e k The Iberian Spirit Spain, Portugal & the Hispanic Diaspora flute, harpsichord, recorder, viola da gamba, voice, medieval percussion, plucked strings, Renaissance winds, historical dance & English country dance beautiful music under the trees near Plymouth, MA August 11-18, 2012 Ƈ Country Dance & Song Society www.cdss.org 44 Summer 2012 Early Music America 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 Trumpets and other High Brass (/PZ[VY`0UZWPYLKI`[OL1VL9 HUK1VLSSH-<[SL`*VSSLJ[PVU I`:HIPUL2H[OHYPUH2SH\Z ;OL5H[PVUHS4\ZPJ4\ZL\TPZ WSLHZLK[VHUUV\UJL[OLW\ISPJH[PVU VM[OLÄYZ[VMÄ]L]VS\TLZPU[OPZZLYPLZ! Volume 1: Instruments of the Single Harmonic Series /HYKJV]LYWHNLZñ_ (WWYV_PTH[LS`PSS\Z[YH[PVUZ" V]LYWOV[VNYHWOZPUM\SSJVSVY 0UJS\KLZ+=+^P[OT\ZPJHSL_HTWSLZ WLYMVYTLKVUPUZ[Y\TLU[ZMYVT[OL <[SL`*VSSLJ[PVU 0:)5! IVVR 0:)5! +=+ (]HPSHISL:WYPUN<: 5H[PVUHS4\ZPJ4\ZL\T <UP]LYZP[`VM:V\[O+HRV[H ,HZ[*SHYR:[YLL[ =LYTPSSPVU:+ ^^^UTT\ZKVYN $! ! & '( ) * !" # $ $ ! " + , - #$ % # #$ % ! . % & ) ' ! ( * ( # / 0 1 ! #$$ % 2 ! 4 . 3 + . % #$ ! % + , % - .// ,++0 1/2003 4445 5! Continued on page 57 Early Music America Summer 2012 45 CARL PHILIPP EMANUEL BACH he omplete orks C. P. E. Bach’s Portrait Collection Bach’s extensive collection of musicians’ portraits from the th century through his own time represents the first of its kind in the history of music and has never before been published as such. Part II of the edition contains some color plates. Part I: Catalogue t Part II: Plates Edited by Annette Richards with appendices edited by Paul Corneilson ---- ( volumes) .* Please see website for a complete list of available and forthcoming volumes. All are cloth-bound and contain introductions and critical commentaries. The Wilhelm Friedemann Bach Collected Works Edition is also available through our website. E-mail: [email protected] Phone orders: () - in the USA; --- phone or fax from outside the USA Web orders: www.cpebach.org A list of performance material available for download free of charge may be found on our website. * These prices are for direct sales only 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 MUSIC NOTATION Early Music America Summer 2012 57 MUSIC NOTATION Lost in Time Press New works and arrangements for recorder ensemble Compositions by Frances Blaker Paul Ashford Hendrik de Regt Harold Owen and others Inquiries: Corlu Collier PMB 309 2226 N Coast Hwy Newport, Oregon 97365 www.lostintimepress.com [email protected] René Slotboom bowed instruments www.reneslotboom.nl 58 Summer 2012 Early Music America 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. Leslie Ross bass and tenor curtals baroque bassoon after Scherer and after Eichentopf classical bassoon after H. Grenser and after Bühner & Keller romantic bassoon after S.G. Wiesner NEW: 18thC 3-piece Bajón (curtal) tuned to original Dorian scale Reedmaking Tools - Restoration & Repair Enquire about a selection of bocals for curtals, historical and modern bassoons 131 ESSEX STREET, 6TH FLOOR - NY, NY 10002 TEL: (212) 260 9344 E-MAIL: [email protected] WEB PAGE: http://www.leslieross.net Bassoons Early Music America Summer 2012 59 Friedrich von Huene Patrick S. von Huene Whether you want to sound like an angel or play like the Devil, fine recorders for every taste after Bressan, Denner, Scherer, Rippert, Stanesby, Jr., Terton &c. V H W, I. B S B, MA USA http://www.vonhuene.com e-mail: [email protected] DAVID PETTY & ASSOC., PIPE ORGANS tel 541-521-7348 Eugene, Oregon www.davidpettyorgans.com [email protected] 60 Summer 2012 Early Music America