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Early Notation History
In Western music, the earliest known attempt at notating music is the use of neumes. These symbols were used in the Christian Church for singing plainchant. The earliest surviving scores are from the 9th and 10th centuries, from the monastery St. Gall in Switzerland. (3) The particular style of neumes from these manuscripts is known as Sangallian. Other geographical areas had different techniques of notation, such as the French, Norman, Beneventan and Aquitanian. Some of these notations may outdate Sangallian, but no older manuscripts survive. (4) The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians says "neumatic notation is clearly of great historical importance, for it stands at the beginning of the development that led to the notational forms we use today." (5)Although neumes could be modified to change their duration (6), they only show an approximate rise and fall of the melodic line. (7) Eventually, changes took place to make the neumes more concrete in their instruction. There was an "imaginary line" which sometimes seemed to exist, which the neumes were places either above or below; eventually, this imaginary line gained a clef to show its pitch, and the line itself became drawn in rather than imaginary. (8) From this line a 4-line staff developed, which is still used for notating chant. (9) Guido of Arezzo (c. 995- c. 1050) is credited with making some of these changes standard. His purposes were pedagogical- he was having difficulty teaching chant to young boys, so therefore felt the notation needed to provide more instruction. (10)
The example below is chant notation using neumes:
