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Present day standard music notation is based on a five-line Staff with symbols for each note showing duration and pitch in twelve tone Equal Temperament . Pitch is shown using the Diatonic Scale , with Accidental s to allow notes on the Chromatic Scale , and duration is shown in beats and fractions of a beat. ORIGINS There is some evidence that a kind of musical notation was practiced by the Egyptians from the 3rd Millennium BC and by others in Asia since ancient times. India in particular has had a long history of sophisticated musical notation. Musical treatises have appeared througout Indian history, going all the way back to the Vedas composed from around 1500 BC to 500 BC . Indian musical notaton known as ''sawr lipi'' has existed in India from the ancient Vedic Era upto the modern era. The Indian scholar and musical theorist Pingala (c. 3rd Century BC ), in his ''Chanda Sutra'', devised the first scientific form of musical notation by using a Binary Numeral System to represent long and short syllables to classify 16 different meters of four syllables. He also used the ''meru-prastara'' ( Pascal's Triangle ) to represent the different combinations and variations of sounds, and used the Binomial Theorem to detect the quality of the Metres . He used this Binary Code as a form of musical notation in the same way that Morse Code was later used as a form of alphabetic notation over 2000 years later. Ancient Greece also had a sophisticated form of musical notation, which was in use from at least the 6th Century BC until approximately the 4th Century AD; many fragments of compositions using this notation survive. The notation consists of symbols placed above text syllables. An example of a complete composition — indeed the ''only'' surviving complete composition using this notation — is the Seikilos Epitaph , which has been variously dated between the 2nd Century BC to the 1st Century AD. The Delphic Hymns , dated to the 2nd century BC, also use this notation, but they are not completely preserved (see photograph). Knowledge of the ancient Greek notation was lost around the time of the Fall Of The Roman Empire . Scholar and music theorist Isidore Of Seville , writing in the early 7th Century , famously remarked that it was impossible to notate music. By the middle of the 9th Century , however, a form of notation began to develop in monasteries in Europe for Gregorian Chant , using symbols known as Neumes ; the earliest surviving musical notation of this type is in the ''Musica disciplina'' of Aurelian Of Réôme , from about 850 . There are scattered survivals from the Iberian Peninsula before this time of a type of notation known as Visigothic Neumes , but its few surviving fragments have not yet been deciphered. Other types of notation date from the 10th Century in China and Japan . In East Asia , and elsewhere in Asia, music was notated with the use of characters for sounds. Rhythmic motifs could also be prescribed in a similar way. In Europe on the other hand, the foundations were laid for a purely symbolic notation of music, which does not seem to have existed anywhere else except India. The founder of what is now considered the standard music stave was Guido D'Arezzo, an Italian Benedictine monk who lived from 995-1050 A.D. His revolutionary method, combining a 4 line stave with the first form of notes known as 'neumes', eventually paved the way to the five line stave which was introduced in the 14th century. Guido D'Arezzo's achievements paved the way for the modern form of written music, music books and the modern concept of a Composer . STANDARD NOTATION DESCRIBED Elements of the staff A staff is generally presented with a Clef , which indicates the particular range of pitches encompassed by the staff. A Treble Clef placed at the beginning of a line of music indicates that the lowest line of the staff represents the note E above Middle C , while the highest line represents the note F one Octave higher. Other common clefs include the Bass Clef (second G below middle C to A below middle C), Alto Clef (F below middle C to G above middle C) and Tenor Clef (D below middle C to E above middle C). These last two clefs are examples of ''C clefs'', in which the line pointed to by the clef should be interpreted as a middle C. In a similar fashion, the treble clef points to a G and the bass clef points to an F. In early music, the clef was written as a letter and its location on the staff was chosen by the writer. The treble clef and bass clef used today are stylized versions of the letters G and F, respectively. Their locations are now standardized. Unusual clefs are used for certain requirements, such as tenor parts in choral music. Following the clef, the Key Signature on a staff indicates the Key of the piece by specifying certain notes to be held flat or sharp throughout the piece, unless otherwise indicated. The key signature is presented in the order of the Circle Of Fifths , with flats B-E-A-D-G-C-F and sharps in the opposite order, F-C-G-D-A-E-B. Another common element of a staff is the Time Signature , which indicates the rhythmic characteristics of the piece. Time signatures generally consist of two numbers; the upper number indicates the number of beats per Measure (or "bar"), while the lower indicates what sort of note constitutes a "beat". A time signature of 4/4 (also known as " Common Time " and sometimes indicated with a large "C" symbol) implies that there will be four beats per measure, with each beat constituting a Quarter Note . A signature of 2/2 (or " Cut Time ", a "C" with a vertical slash) allows 2 beats per measure, with each Half Note lasting a beat. This is important, because the first beat of each bar is generally stressed. Less commonly, music that lacks rigid rhythmic organization is written without a time signature. Notes representing a pitch outside of the scope of the five line staff can be represented using Leger Line s, which provide a single note with additional lines and spaces. Octave (8va) notation is used, particularly for keyboard music, where notes are substantially above or below the staff. Multiple staves can be grouped together to form a Staff System . A system is used where two staves are required to cover the range of the instrument (as with a keyboard instrument), or where multiple related instruments are played (as with three violin parts on a score). A score for ensemble music includes multiple systems, as does most organ music (where the pedals are written as a separate system). Various directions to the player regarding matters such as Tempo and Dynamics are added above or below the staff, often in Italian (sometimes abbreviated). For vocal music, lyrics are written. Here is a sample illustrating some common musical notation. : : Development of music notation See Also: 1=Modal notation 2=Mensural notation The earliest known music notation was encoded in Cuneiform Script in the region of Mesopotamia , with surviving examples dating as far back as the middle of the second millennium B.C.E. Later civilizations, most notably that of Ancient Greece, developed their own forms of notation, which were often written on sheets or scrolls of Papyrus . The ancestors of modern symbolic music notation originated in the Catholic Church , as Monk s developed methods to put Plainchant (sacred songs) to paper. The earliest of these ancestral systems, from the 8th Century , did not originally utilise a staff, and used '' Neum '' (or ''neuma'' or ''pneuma''), a system of dots and strokes that were placed above the text. Although capable of expressing considerable musical complexity, they could not exactly express pitch or time and served mainly as a reminder to one who already knew the tune, rather than a means by which one who had never heard the tune could sing it exactly at sight. To address the issue of exact pitch, a staff was introduced consisting originally of a single horizontal line, but this was progressively extended until a system of four parallel, horizontal lines was standardised on. The vertical positions of each mark on the staff indicated which pitch or pitches it represented (pitches were derived from a Musical Mode , or Key ). Although the 4-line staff has remained in use until the present day for plainchant, for other types of music, staffs with differing numbers of lines have been used at various times and places for various instruments. The modern system of a universal standard 5-line staff was first adopted in France , and became widely used by the 16th century (although the use of staffs with other numbers of lines was still widespread well into the 17th Century ). Because the Neum system arose from the need to notate songs, exact timing was initially not a particular issue as the music would generally follow the natural rhythms of the Latin language. However, by the 10th Century a system of representing up to four note lengths had been developed. These lengths were relative rather than absolute, and depended on the duration of the neighboring notes. It was not until the 14th Century that something like the present system of fixed note lengths arose. Starting in the 15th Century , vertical ''bar lines'' were used to divide the staff into sections. These did not initially divide the music into measures of equal length (as most music then featured far fewer regular rhythmic patterns than in later periods), but appear to have been introduced as an aid to the eye for "lining up" notes on different staves that were to be played or sung at the same time. The use of regular measures became commonplace by the end of the 17th Century . It is worth noting that standard notation was originally developed for use with voice. Proponents of other systems claim that standard notation is less than ideally suited to instrumental music. Symbols used in modern musical notation See Also: Modern musical symbols See also: Da Capo , Dal Segno , Coda , Fermata , Accent . Terms for note durations in American and British English: In U.S. parlance, '' Semibreve '' and '' Minim '' are used only in discussions of early music; ''whole note'' and ''half note'' are used in other contexts. |
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