Music Notation

Ancient Babylon (ca. 1700 BC)

• The words are written above the middle line, the music below it.
• No one is certain how to read this music, so we don’t really know what it sounds like

Ancient Greece (ca. 200 BC)

• The Epitaph of Seikilos is a tombstone inscription that has pitch and rhythm notation.
• The Greek letters represent pitches in an ancient Greek scale.
• Lines and dashes above the letters indicate duration.
• Slurs and dots seem to be indicating articulations
• The text reads: “As long as you live, be lighthearted. Let nothing trouble you. Life is only too short, and time takes its toll.”

Early Christian Church (ca. 800 AD)

• This is an example of neumes - symbols written above a Latin text to help the singers remember how the melody goes

• The symbols don't indicate specific pitches or rhythms - just a basic memory aid
  

Early Christian Church (ca. 1000 AD)

• This is an example of heighted neumes - now the symbols more clearly use high and low to indicate pitch height

• There is a single line that indicates a single central pitch (A) - this is the beginning of the staff!
  

Early Christian Church (ca. 1150 AD)

• This is the same music notated using a four-line staff (with different colors for each line), known as Guidonian notation

• At the beginning of each line are letters indicating the pitch of each line - these letters evolved into our clefs

Early Christian Church (ca. 1300)

• Here is the same music using a more modern style of plainchant notation (still used in monasteries today)

• Some of the neume symbols are actually groups of pitches rather than a single pitch. When two notes are stacked together, the bottom note is sung first.

• Here is a much fancier illuminated manuscript using the same four-line staff and neumatic notation