Has it ever occurred to you to wonder why the stave has five lines, rather than four or six? Do you know who invented time signatures? Why aren’t there B or E clefs? Why do we use the letters A through F to name musical notes, but name the scale with no flats or sharps C instead of A? Who made all these musical notation rules?
The truth is, they’ve all evolved and changed over an extremely long time.
The Origins of Musical Notation: Ancient Greece, 100 AD
Music was a big part of Greek civil life nearly 2000 years ago, and they needed a way to write it down. A tombstone, believed to have been carved around 100 AD, contains the earliest known notations. Called the Seikilos Epitaph, it reveals the oldest notated song, complete with lyrics and music. Notes were, appropriately, labelled with letters from the Greek alphabet with special symbols inscribed above them. The lyrics were aligned below the notes, not unlike modern sheet music.
The Seikilos Epitaph has been transcribed and recorded by modern musicians. You can listen to an interpretation of this 2000 year old, complete song here.
A New System for the Church: Europe, 600 AD
During the middle part of the first century, the Church was the centre of Europe’s musical activity. But the music wasn’t for the average citizen. Instead, monks trained for years to memorize songs known as “Plainchant” by heart. But as this portfolio of songs became so large as to be unmanageable, a new way of sorting them was needed. So, the Church developed a system called “neumes” was developed to solve the problem.
Neumes utilized strange flecks and squiggles above words in lyrics. These symbols told the singers when the pitch rose and fell. But, that’s really all the information they impart; there is no indication as to how high or low each not is in relation to the next, nor any attempt to notate rhythm. But it was enough for the system to catch on. Soon, every monastery in Europe made their own “improvements.”
Birth of the Stave and Clef: Italy, 1000 AD
Around 1000 AD, Guido d’Arezzo (c.992-1033, Benedictine monk, was an extraordinary music teacher. And it was Guido who first thought to draw a line on the page, so the neumes could be placed with a fixed pitch. This was the first stave.
He began with a single red line, which he labeled with one note–either F or C. This was the first clef. With this starting point, he wrote the neumes on, above, or below the line, showing their relative pitch.
Guido refined his system over many years, adding more lines and even different colours. His system was widely adopted, and eventually the four line stave gained favorability. At the same time, the flecks and squiggles of the neumes were slowly replaced with square-shaped symbols for notes.
Key Signatures Arrive in Musical Notation: Europe, 1100-1200
By the 13th century, many musical manuscripts had adopted the 5-line stave, as well as a few others, as well as the first key signature consisting of just one flat.
From the manuscript of the song “Sumer is icumen in,” the letter C is seen as the clef, and just next to it sits the flat symbol for Bb.
Time Signatures and Mensural Notation: Europe, 1300
By this time, the Plainchants of the monks had become so rhythmically complicated, a new system was needed to put the rhythm down on paper, rather than rely solely on memory. Finally, with the creation of mensural notation, musical notation gained the ability to convey pitch and rhythm at the same time. The system was complex, but allowed for four basic “time signatures,” called “mensurations”: duple and triple, each of which can be divided further into a duple or triple rhythm.
Four symbols were created to represent each of these mensurations. If a vertical line cut through the symbol, the beat was to be halved. The symbols often used for “common time” (4/4) and “cut common time” (2/2) date back to this era.
The note names still used in Western music were also established at this time.
Musical Notation Modernizes: Europe, 1600
The 17th century was a time of great development in musical notation. Now that composers had the tools to write music down, musical creativity flowed like water. By this time, notes had taken on the round, oval shape we know today, and smaller notes, like the quarter and eighth notes had been introduced.
As musical compositions became more complex in key and rhythm, composers needed to overhaul the old time signature system. In its place, the modern “fraction-style” used today was invented. The first key signatures with sharps also appeared.
With all the innovations happening so quickly, there was little consensus on the “right” way to do things.
Finalization and Dissemination: Europe, 1700s
As Baroque music evolved into Classical, musical notation had to keep up. Classical music used more dynamics than Baroque, with sharp contrasts between soft and loud passages. Classic also utilized a lot of smooth legato passages contrasting with harsh staccato or accents. Musical notation thus began to incorporate symbols for staccato and slurs, as well as letters for dynamics.
At this point, musical notation looked very much like what is used in modern music. This standardization owes a lot to the invention of the printing press around the same time, which allowed music to be published for the masses.
1900 to Today
As with every century before, musical notation continues to evolve with music itself. New ideas that came about during the 20th century include microtones (notes closer together than semitones), “prepared” instruments (e.g. a piano with a hammer lodged between the strings), aleatoric music (which relies on chance, making the music different each time it’s performed), and other special effects.
In most cases, modern composers adapt traditional notation for their own purposes, but other musician have rejected traditional notation all together.
With new innovations in music technology everyday, there’s no telling what new notations the 21st century will bring.
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