Page 26 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

24
UT, RE, MI, FA,
IN CONTEXT
FOCUS
Early music notation
BEFORE
500 ce Boethius, a Roman
senator and philosopher, writes
De institutione musica, which
was still in use as a music
primer in the 16th century.
935 ce In France, Odo of
Cluny’s Enchiridion musices
becomes the first book to
name musical pitches with
the letters A to G.
AFTER
1260 German music theorist
Franco of Cologne writes
Ars cantus mensurabilis,
which adds refinements to
Guido’s notation.
1300 In Paris, Johannes
de Garlandia writes De
mensurabili musica, describing
the six rhythmic modes.
US_024-025_Guido_d_Arezzo.indd 24
SOL, LA
MICROLOGUS (c. 1026), GUIDO D’AREZZO
odern Western musical
notation has its origins
M in Europe’s monasteries
at the end of the first millennium.
The earliest musical symbols,
called neumes, were written aids
for chants that used simple pen
strokes to remind the monks if
the music moved up or down, or
remained on the same tone.
Diastematic, or “heightened,”
neumes brought more clarity
to notated chant by formalizing
the note shapes and imagining
a single horizontal line across
the page. This gave a “horizon”
against which the singer could The Guidonian Hand was a system
work out the pitch. Nonetheless, invented to teach monks the easiest
heightened neumes were open way to reference the 20 notes of
to misinterpretation and greater medieval liturgical music.
precision was needed.
pitch was now not only fixed from
Invention of the staff note to note, but the singer knew
The solution, credited to Guido at a glance on which note to start.
d’Arezzo, an Italian monk and Guido’s treatise Micrologus
music theorist (though he may (c.1026) describes the singing
have only formalized what was aid for which he is best known, the
then current practice) was to draw Guidonian Hand. If a modern singer
four lines across the page, allowing has to describe a particular note,
the singer to precisely gauge the they might picture the continuous
melody’s movement. Guidonian row of notes using seven letters
notation sometimes has one of the from A to G, repeated over the
lines in yellow ink to show the note seven octaves of a piano. To specify
C, and one in red to show F, so a particular “C,” the singer might
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