Evolution of Western staff notation

Neumes

Staff notation has its roots in the neumatic notations of plainchant and secular song of the 9th–12th century. Neumes were graphic signs indicating essentially the rise and fall of the voice. Their origin lies probably 1,000 years earlier in signs devised by Greek and Roman grammarians to guide declamation, such as / acutus (high voice), gravis (low), and ∧ circumflexus (falling). The musical adaptations of these signs took many different regional forms. Unlike note symbols in staff notation, neumes, with two exceptions, comprised two, three, four, or more notes each and indicated their approximate relative pitches. Each comprised the notes belonging to a single syllable of text, though in florid chant the notes of a single syllable might be split up into several neumes:

Neumes were only a memory aid to singers who knew words and melody by heart. Between the 10th and 12th centuries, however, there occurred significant developments toward a notation that could be sight-read. “Heighted,” or “diastematic,” neumes were spaced on the page in relation to each other, so that an entire line of them formed a continuous graph of pitch over the words of text:

Eventually, precision of pitch was further achieved by using horizontal scratched lines as a grid on which to space the neumes, so that degrees of the scale fell alternately on a line or in a space, and by colouring one line red to signify the pitch F and possibly another yellow to signify C—or by placing a letter F or C at the beginning of the appropriate line. Together, the two devices fixed the relative pitches of all notes by indicating where the semitones of the scale occurred (that is, immediately below the marked lines: E–F or B♮–C). In the 11th century two signs from a quite different system of notation (alphabetical notation) were incorporated as accidentals before the pitch “B”: b, the ancestor of ♭; 𝇒, the ancestor of ♮ and ♯, and also of the German “h,” which refers to b♮. These two signs were progressively applied to other pitches in the following centuries. By the 13th century a four-line staff ruled entirely in black or red had become established, using stylized forms of the letters f, c, and g (ancestors of the modern 𝄢, 𝄡, and 𝄞) as clefs. For polyphonic music a five-line staff became standard by the 14th century, but keyboard music in some countries used six- or seven-line staves as late as the mid-17th century.

During the 12th century, in northern and northeastern France the thin, curved lines of neumes were drawn more thickly at the points corresponding to the separate notes within them. In time, a firmly rectilinear notation of heavy horizonal pen strokes, diamond-shaped dots, and hairline vertical strokes emerged, whose groups of notes are called “ligatures”:

This was the notation of the troubadours’ and trouvères’ songs; also of plainchant from the 13th century to the present day. It was also used in 12th-century polyphony for the upper voices, which were without text. Freed from syllabic considerations, the grouping of notes into ligatures took on rhythmic significance, specific groupings representing short, repeated patterns called rhythmic modes:

A ligature did not yet have a single, unvarying meaning. Its rhythmic pattern depended upon context.

Mensural notation

The freeing of ligatures from considerations of context occurred during the early 13th century. Time values for ligatures, single notes, and rests were codified around 1260 by influential theorist Franco of Cologne. The notes then in use included the duple long, later called maxima (𝆶); long (𝆷); breve (𝄺); and semibreve (𝆺). In French music a shorter note value was created: the minim (𝆺𝅥).

These note symbols provided the basis for notation from the late 13th to the late 15th century. This system, called mensural notation, was based on several fundamental principles that determined the value of a note relative to that of its neighbours. In the terminology of mensural notation a given note might be either perfect—i.e., divided into three notes of the next lesser time value; or imperfect—i.e., divided into two notes of the next lesser value. Thus, as in part (a) of the example below, a long might be perfect, containing three breves; or imperfect, containing two breves.

To determine which note symbols were perfect and imperfect for a given piece, special symbols were devised: 𝇇, 𝇈, 𝇊, 𝇋, 𝇌, 𝇍, , , , etc. (Of these 𝄴 and 𝄵 survive, together with fractions such as , as modern time signatures.)

Specific rules provided for lengthening or shortening the value of notes in certain instances. To “imperfect” a long meant to shorten it by one-third of its value; this occurred when the long was preceded or followed by a breve or by notes equalling a breve in value, as shown in part (b) of the example below (for purposes of illustration, numbers have been placed under the notes showing their time value relative to the shortest note). Part (c) of the example shows another common alteration of time value: in a composition in which the long is perfect, a breve (brevis) preceding it may be doubled in value under certain conditions.

The time-value relationships between breve and long similarly applied to the other pairs of notes: maxima and long (longa); breve and semibreve (semibrevis); and semibreve and minim (minima).

As the system of mensural notation evolved, another device, coloration, came into use. If a composer wished to render a potentially perfect note imperfect, he could write it in red or as a hollow note (as , 𝅆, 𝆹); these two devices had, however, various other, less common meanings. About 1400, hollow note shapes were adopted where full black notes had hitherto been used, and full black served as coloration. The notes then current and their corresponding rests were as follows:

Transition to modern staff notation

In 16th-century manuscripts and, later, in printed music, the diamond-headed notes became rounded. Ligatures were used less often in the later 15th century. The principles of perfection and imperfection gave way to the modern relationship of 2 to 1 between adjacent note values, with the dot adding an extra half value to give a 3 to 1 relationship.

Shorter note values were also introduced, and the old, longer ones became obsolete. Yet, because of a paradoxical survival from 15th-century practice, slow music has tended to be written in short values (e.g., Beethoven’s slow movements) and fast music in long values.

The bar line as a measure of metre arose first in 15th-century tablatures (notation showing playing position rather than pitch, as for lute). Barring entered staff notation in the 17th century, but regularly spaced barring became a practice only in the 18th century. Separate tempo indications, arising first in the 17th century, were verbally expressed; for example, adagio, largo, presto. The range of these terms greatly increased during the 18th and 19th centuries, and the metronome mark, an absolute indication of tempo, has never superseded them since its arrival in Beethoven’s day. The bulk of the shorthand devices emerged during the 17th century, figured bass early in the century, the majority of ornamental signs later. Indications for loud and soft arose early in the century, expressed as words (forte, mezzoforte, piano) and later as abbreviations (f, mf, p). Graphic signs for dynamic and attack (staccato dot, crescendo mark, for example, and also phrase marking) appeared in the 18th century. A great proliferation of dynamic instructions and signs occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.