How Do You Write Down a Melody Nobody Has Written Before? The First Notation

The earliest European notation appears in manuscripts from the ninth century as small marks placed above the words of chant, indicating the shape of the melody by rising, falling and grouping rather than by specifying any particular pitch. They could not tell a singer who did not already know the melody how it went, which was not their purpose, since they served as reminders for somebody who had learned the chant orally and needed help recalling a detail. Different regions developed different sets of marks with distinct appearances, and comparing them is how the regional traditions are traced. Reconstructing the melodies they record depends on later sources that do specify pitch, which is why the interpretation of the earliest manuscripts remains argued about.

The development proceeded in identifiable steps over about three centuries:

• •Marks placed at varying heights above the text, giving a rough indication of relative pitch
• •A single drawn line used as a reference, with marks placed relative to it
• •A second line added, and then a set of four
• •Letters at the start of a line identifying which pitch it represents, which became the clef
• •Square note shapes replacing the earlier marks, which suit a pen and are easier to place precisely
• •The result specifies pitch exactly and says nothing definite about rhythm

Fixing pitch on paper changed what music could be in ways that go well beyond convenience. A melody could be transmitted accurately to somebody who had never heard it, which allowed a repertoire to be standardised across a continent, and standardising the chant was in fact the political motivation, since Carolingian authorities wanted uniform liturgy across their territory. A composer could work out music too complex to hold in memory, which is the precondition for elaborate polyphony, and the growth of multi-voice writing follows the notation closely. Music could be studied, compared and analysed as a text. And a repertoire could accumulate rather than being limited to what performers remembered, which is why European art music has the shape it does.

One eleventh century figure did more than anyone to make notation teachable and his innovations survive. Guido of Arezzo, a monk working in Italy, is credited with establishing the use of a staff of lines with defined pitches, which turned approximate placement into exact specification, and with a teaching device assigning syllables to the degrees of a scale, taken from the first syllables of successive lines of a hymn each beginning a step higher. He also described a method of mapping notes onto the joints of the hand so a teacher could point at a position and a choir could sing the corresponding note, which was used for centuries. His stated aim was reducing the time required to train a singer, which he claimed to have cut from years to months, and the claim is plausible.

Pitch was solved long before rhythm, and the gap is the central problem in performing this repertoire. The notation specifies which notes and says nothing reliable about their relative lengths, and whether chant was sung with all notes roughly equal or with a rhythm indicated by subtleties in the earlier marks has been argued about for over a century, with monastic scholars at Solesmes advocating one interpretation from the nineteenth century and others reading the early signs as rhythmic. Systems for notating rhythm developed from the thirteenth century, driven by the requirements of polyphony where voices must be coordinated. Dynamics, tempo and expression were not notated for centuries more, and performers supplied them by convention, which is what historically informed performance tries to recover.

The first marks indicated melodic shape for singers who already knew the chant and could not convey an unfamiliar melody. Lines, then a clef letter, pinned pitch down exactly over about three centuries. Fixing pitch allowed a standardised repertoire and made elaborate polyphony possible, while rhythm was not notated reliably until much later and chant rhythm remains disputed.