The musical notation of the middle ages [Ноты]



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THE


            MUSICAL NOTATION


OF THE

MIDDLE AGES

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THE





                MUSICAL NOTATION




OF THE




                MIDDLE AGES




EXEMPLIFIED BY

FACSIMILES OF MANUSCRIPTS

SBrittrn brttotrn tlie Centl) anti ^irtcrntb Ontuiieg (nrlusi'br,



DEDICATED (BY PERMISSION) TO

13ЖЖ SHE Huke of Edinburgh.



PREPARED FOR THE MEMBERS OF


THE PLAINSONG AND MEDIAEVAL MUSIC SOCIETY.

LONDON:
PUBLISHED BY J. MASTERS & Co., 78, NEW BOND STREET, W.
1890.

EXCELSISSIMO • ET • POTENTISSIMO ■ PRINCIPI


ALFREDO • ERNESTO•ALBERTO


K.G. • K.T. • K.P.


        DUCI

        DE

        EDINBURGH


REG. • CLASSIS ■ MAG. • BRITA NNLE

ILLUSTRISSIMO ■ PRAEFECTO

MUSICES

ARTIUMQUE • OMNIUM • ET • SCIENTIARUM • EI • PERTINENTIUM

PERSTUDIOSISSIMO • CULTORI • FAUTORI

HAEC • DIAGRAMMATA • NOTARUM • ARTIS • MUSIC/E

EX • ANTIQUIS ' LIBRES

APUD • ANGLICANAS • BIBLIOTHECAS • REPOSITIS

EXCERPTA


D. D. D.

NOTICE.


        The Society is indebted to E. Ma unde Thompson, Esq., and E. W. B. Nicholson, Esq., for their kind permission to reproduce the MSS. in the British Museum and Bodleian Libraries respectively, and to И. Hughes-Hughes, Esq., of the British Museum, for his 'valuable Descriptions of the Blates.


        The writer of the brief account of the development of Musical Notation also desires to record his recognition of the important assistance afforded him by the Rev. С. I. Black, D.D., IV. J. Birkbeck, Esq., and T. L. Southgate, Esq.

                                          Till'



            DEVELOPMENT OF MUSICAL NOTATION





HE History of Musical Notation is of twofold interest, for in it maybe traced Music® nota-tionis historia et both the attempts made through many centuries to express to the eye the arlⁱs music® evo-¹                                                °                                    ¹                     J lutiones ostcndit et
                countless effects intended by a composer, and the growth of music from its UL°niaS Tcriptorcs simplest form to the more abstruse art of the present day. And even the system ™uₙsₜ,cⁱexi’¹¹,ⁿc‘ now in use presents little more than the skeleton waiting to be clothed with the genius of the performer. The notation of a Wagner differs considerably from that of a Haydn, and indicates sufficiently the advance in emotional expression which has

  been made ; but we know that neither is complete in itself, for it is only the genius of the musician which can divine the true intentions of the composer, and read his meaning in the written page. In the study of ancient music we have, therefore, not only to translate into tonal sounds the written symbols, but by placing ourselves in the tentative position of the scribe, discover what ideas those symbols were intended to express. Many of the difficulties which puzzled a mediaeval theorist are now practically non-existent, but we must not the less carefully study the way in which those difficulties were regarded by him ; it will afford a clue to the state of mind of the early composers, and so enable us to form a just idea of their conceptions. The reprints by Coussemaker of mediaeval treatises on music and his comments thereon have greatly smoothed the student’s path. It is the object of this Publication to present, by the aid of photography, more accurately than can be done by any other method, facsimiles of notation which may be of use to readers of such reprints and other works on the subject.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF MUSICAL NOTATION

   Occidentalis Europa: notatio unicd. fonte, eaque a scrip-toribus    musicis
Grascis et Romanis intacta, derivata est.

  Origo neumarum, qua: secundum suas formas siinplices tantum in memo-riam modos jamdu-dum auribus notos revocant.

     The notation of Western Europe seems to have been derived from one source, and that quite independent of any system in use before the fall of the Roman Empire. The first reference to it that we find is the statement of John the Deacon in the ninth century, that S. Gregory (d. 604) used certain signs as a sort of memoria technica to remind singers of the chant they had already learned by ear, but it is claimed by M. Gevaert that the credit usually ascribed to Gregory the Great should be given to Gregory III. (d. 741). Great doubt exists as to the age of the earliest MSS. containing musical notation, there being a tendency to antedate such relics, but there are numerous examples of the tenth century for certain in a notation which answers to this description. This system is called the pneumatic, either from ᵥ^.o. a sign or a breathing; the former derivation is adopted by those who incline to a literary view of the symbols, and the latter by those who think that the pneztms or signs for the notes should be regarded in their vocal aspect. It has been attempted with some ingenuity to prove that the Mozarabic pneums of Spain (Pl. I.) are Visigothic letters, but putting aside the impossibility of a combination of these numerous letters forming a melody, a comparison of the Plateswill show that with allowance for varieties of handwriting, they are the same as those in other MSS. of the period. The widespread use of these symbols in different forms so early as the tenth century would seem to prove their invention at a much earlier date.
     The Abbd Raillard has clearly shown that these pneums are combinations of a dot and a stroke, the former, which was originally a dash from left to right ('), signifying the grave accent, or a low note, and the latter, a dash from right to left ('), the acute accent, or a note relatively higher. The distinction between the dot and the stroke is preserved in single notes, except of course in a succession of those of identical pitch, but when combined some modification is needed, as in the clrvis (Fig. 1 e) and its compounds, where the second or lower note is represented by the older form, a stroke. It will, however, be noted that the first or upper note is always represented by the stroke being drawn from below, upwards, and the second by a stroke from above, downwards, though these distinctions afterwards disappeared in the heavier Gothic writing of Pl. X. The pneums therefore only showed that the notes in a group were relatively of higher or lower pitch ; they expressed no fixed tonal intervals, and only served as guides to the singer. As far as they went they were all that was needed, but to guard against the mistakes of careless choirmen, certain guide-

THE DEVELOPMENT OF MUSICAL NOTATION

3

letters were invented in the eighth century by Romanus, a monk of S. Gall, which . Liters significative neumis a showed when an interval presented any special difficulty, or where a note required Rᵣ°ₑ^;ь^сп"¹еп'ц particular expression. Such were I =levatur, higher, ш = jusum, lower, г = celeriter, Sis\ariatSnes quickly, t = tene, to be held, some of which occur in Pl. II. These marks of warning Iⁿd,caⁱeⁿt' were no doubt found extremely useful, as the pneums simply expressed the outline of the chant in almost the same way as would be done by writing a modern composition throughout in notes of equal value. But the MSS. containing Romanian letters are not so numerous as those in which a system is adopted of writing the pneums with certain distinctions which are wanting in their rudimental Quxdam signa forms. In Pl. VIL, for instance, the podatus (Fig. i a\ will be found with the lower bus neumis addita hoc agunt ad efifi-note not only lightly written with a curved line as is usual, but with a thick straight ca<?ⁱorem normam, J ° J                                                                                               о quippe quse accenstroke as well. The vertical stroke too, sometimes has a small dash across the MtarumTndicent⁵ top, which in a longer form also appears on the clivis. It is evident that there must be some meaning in these signs, and the matter awaits fuller investigation.
The probability is that the notes on which these marks occur, are intended to be prolonged, and the same rule possibly applies to the dashes which are occasionally found among the dots of a cliniacus (Fig. i f) and scandicus (Fig. i g). The oral teaching of the chant made them not absolutely necessary, for they were far from universally employed, but their right interpretation is of the greatest importance to the modern student in his efforts to restore the original rendering, for such H„c ₛᵢ„ₙ_ ᵢₙ <7                                                                                        < у *           A 1 CA-. Vrf ОI X1 Cl J 11
  .... ᵣ                 .              .   ,        .     ..         л rr-r- -г-i ni •               r notatione quadrat^
delicacies of notation are entirely wanting in later MSb. 1 he Plainsong for desunt: ambo sys-temata igitur co-which this system was used, is of course purely recitative, and therefore mainly icndasum. dependent on the taste of the singer, but in default of trustworthy tradition which has long since been lost, it is difficult to over-estimate the value of the pneums in elucidation of the later staff-notation.
       Besides the pneums expressive of single note-groups, there were others which signa omatOs. signified certain ornaments, such as turns and trills. There is a diversity of opinion as to the exact interpretation of the instructions given about them by old writers, but the strofthicus (Fig. i /z) is probably a trill and the quilisma (Fig. i b) some form of a turn, which possibly consisted of only three notes as represented by the three dashes which form the lower part of the pneum. Fig. II. represents the Kyrie Rex splendens taken from a page following that in facsimile (Pl. II.) which intermutabiiitas . ,                                   _     ... .                     1         t                         quilisma orisci et
contains the same melody.             It will be noticed that the quilisma in the latter podati per modos
Kyrie rex splendens (cujus auctor fuit S. Dunstanus) in efidcm charts dis-similes, illustrata.

appears in the former as a simple podatus, and that the first quilisma in this example is represented by another symbol, the orisons (Fig. i d) in Pl. II. This interchange

THE DEVELOPMENT OF MUSICAL NOTATION

of pneums tends to show that there can have been little practical difference between them, for the two versions were written by the same hand, probably within an interval of a few minutes. It appears, therefore, as if these ornaments were not essential, especially as in this instance the chant could hardly have been corrupted, for the composer was still living when the MS. was written. The interest, then, of the pneums for us consists in their dividing the notes into definite group-forms or phrases, and in their indicating vocal ornaments which are in some cases absolutely required by the tonality. Of this a striking instance occurs in Нас Dies, where the first strophicus introduces the В natural after the previous В flat,

  Notatio alpha-betica in usum librorum instruc-tionis cantusque figurati adhibita.

  NotatioHucbaldi lineis interject is scripta.

  Mira exoritur cupido intentionem sonfls indicandi, neumis varia inter )oca dispositis (cf. Ex. ill. ct Ex. IV.) et strictam quoque secundum normam (cf. Ex. VIII.) quit index sub finem cujusque line® hanc intentionem evincit quamvis nulla linea membrane insculpatur.
  Ortus Gallos inter meridionales nota-tionis novae punctis superpositis unidi lined, membranis insculpata.

     and so brings the melody into the second mode.
     The objection to the pneumatic notation of its not showing the pitch of the notes was, however, apparent, and for purposes of instruction an alphabetic system was adopted as in Pls. XVII. and XVIII. The former is an example from a treatise on harmony by Hucbald who lived in the ninth century, and shows in the left-hand column the letters he used for the notes. The latter contains in its upper part a piece of harmony far in advance of anything by Hucbald, where the notes are represented by ordinary letters. The example from Hucbald also shows a method invented by him of placing the words at different levels corresponding to the melody, but though this system contained the germ of our staff notation, it was apparently not used except by its inventor. Both these systems were in fact too unwieldy for general use, and were, indeed, not required except for harmonized music. But there was, no doubt, an instinctive groping towards a better system than the pneumatic. Pls. HI. and IV., where the pneums have assumed the form of small notes joined by a stroke (not to be confounded with the distinctive signs in Pl. VII. above referred to), must have come from the hands of scribes who felt that notes of different pitch should not be on the same level, and in Pl. VIII. the notes are certainly intended to be placed at their right height. The greatest advance was, however, first made in Provence and adjacent districts, where the pneumatic notation of Pl. IV. seems to have developed into that of the superposed points, of which Pl. V. is a fine example. One line is ruled with a style, showing clearly against the light on the vellum, and on this and at fixed intervals from it the notes are placed. But regular spacing must have been very difficult, and it is easy to see how it must have occurred to some copyist to scratch and even colour some more lines. Some early MSS. have only one coloured line, but the full development of the invention has been by tradition attributed to Guido of Arezzo who lived in the

THE DEVELOPMENT OF MUSICAL NOTATION

5

eleventh century. The system generally attributed to him is of having used a yellow line for C, a red for F, and scratched or black lines for E and A, on which the pneums or superposed points were placed, as exemplified in Pls. XI. to XIII. Modern research renders it doubtful whether tradition is correct, but however invented, the use of the stave spread gradually through Europe. The various national handwritings still showed their peculiarities when the pneums were placed on the lines, and so the Gothic pneums of Pls. VIL and X. assumed the forms of Pl. XIII. in Flanders and Pl. XIV. in Germany, while the French and English forms of Pls. III. and VIII. became the notation of Pls. IX. and XVI. The Provencal system on the other hand developed through Pl. XL into the rectangular notation of Pl. XV. Pl. XII. is in the Lombardic character which has affinities both with Provencal and Gothic calligraphy.
           The merits of the staff notation were however sadly deficient in one particular. The pitch of the notes was clearly shown thereby, but the many delicacies of accent and ornament which the later pneums signified were almost entirely lost. The group-forms were preserved, but their sub-divisions as shown in the distinctive marks of Pl. VII. had disappeared. They became, in fact, a translation into notes of the earliest pneums without even their signs of ornament. The explanation of the latter defect is probably that the turns and trills which were easily executed by the flexible voices of Italian singers, were omitted by the monks of the northern races. For the neglect in marking the finer accentual distinctions of the note-groups we may surmise that over-confidence in the traditional rendering was accountable. The notators judged from their own experience that the chief difficulty for singers was uncertainty as to the pitch of the notes ; the mode of accenting them was too well known to admit of mistakes on this score. For this reason we find that several distinct pneums are interpreted in identically the same manner in the square notation. It is therefore clear that the one system must be read with the other, and it is only when the minor distinctions in the pneums have been thoroughly explained, that the staff notation of Plainsong can be properly understood. This notation, then, showed nothing more than the group-forms and the tonal value. The distinctions of longs, breves, &c., as in measured music, were totally wanting, and the various forms of the notes arose only from peculiarities of handwriting. The tailed notes, for instance, were a survival of the stroke-pneum, which signified a higher note than the one preceding it, and were

  Huie subsecuta est inventio quarto-lineatae formas cui neumae varias inter regiones consuetae positas sunt.

   Culpas notationis quadratas, signis et accentus et orna-menti omissis ; for-sitan hinc exortae sunt quod musici, redditioni’ ab an-tiquis traditas nimis confisi sunt.

   Neumse dissimi-les figuris similibus in notatione quad-rata interpretatas sunt.