MUSICAL PALEOGRAPHY. — It is the science of ancient notations, of the systems used to translate music into the visual field. In the broadest sense, its subject is therefore the reading of ancient musical texts, their understanding, and consequently their restoration in the auditory field. In the more precise sense, attention has been limited to the first two objects; and today there is a tendency to restrict musical paleography to the study of neumes alone, with their forms, their history, and their geographical distribution, while the musical interpretation of these writings would become a distinct science, called musical diplomatics.
Musical paleography is a relatively recent science. The 17th–18th centuries regarded it merely as a curiosity. Nevertheless, the names of Praetorius, Jumilhac, Gerbert may be noted, to which Villoteau is added at the beginning of the 19th century. A few years later, this science made great progress with Lambillotte, Coussemaker, Danjou, Nisard, La Fage, Fétis and others, who are true pioneers in the field of Gregorian chant. Soon the domain of musical paleography would expand: interest turned to the songs of antiquity as well as to the songs of the various peoples of the world. At the same time, the liturgical movement intensified research into the music of the different rites of East and West; but the chant of the Latin Church is currently the best known. We shall limit ourselves here to what concerns II. Let us say at once that the study of Byzantine musical paleography is less advanced, whether it concerns paleo-Byzantine notation (9th–11th centuries) or later notation.
After the publication of *Mélodies grégoriennes* by Dom J. Pothier (Tournai 1880), two major collections attest to the interest given to musical paleography: one is the work of the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society, which followed the Oxford Society for the Study of Plainsong; the other is entitled *Paléographie musicale. Les principaux manuscrits... par les Bénédictins de Solesmes*, under the direction of Dom Mocquereau (Solesmes 1889 ff.; 1st series, vols. 15, 2nd series, vols. 2). In the German language, the works of Riemann, Fleischer, Wagner, and Wolf are noteworthy. Currently, research and monographs have multiplied; among many others, the names of Bannister, Ferretti, and Mocquereau deserve mention.
1. Neumes
The signs used in the notation of the chants of the Latin or Greek Church have received the name of *neumes*, which means signs or breaths, according to the etymology adopted. Alongside modern notes, they belong to the musical writing system called “diastematic” in opposition to the “phonetic” system. The latter uses letters or numbers to indicate intervals or simply melodic pitch; used by the ancient Greeks, the Hindus, and the Chinese, it was championed, following J.-J. Rousseau, by Paris, then by Galin and Chevré in France and by the “Tonic sol-fa” in England. It should be noted that, while the term “phonetic notation” may be acceptable, the term “diastematic notation” as used by musicologists cannot be admitted as it stands: it is ambiguous and inexact. It would be better to speak of semiography to designate the conventional signs representing music and to reserve the word “astemathy” for a more precise use, as we shall see below.Neumes are formed from the two accents, acute and grave, and their combinations. But other signs also intervene in neumatic semiography, so that a distinction must be made between simple neumes and special neumes. Simple neumes are in turn divided into original neumes and derived neumes. There are three original simple neumes or signs. The *virga* is an ascending accent from left to right. The grave accent descends from left to right and has no particular name. Its length, much shorter than the *virga*, is often reduced to a dot, so that it is not always easy to distinguish it from the third original neume, the *punctum*. This, as its name indicates, is a simple dot, but it can lengthen into a horizontal stroke.
Derived neumes combine these three elements. It suffices to give a brief nomenclature: it is easily understood. The *pes* or *podatus* is formed from the grave accent + acute accent; the *clivis* from the acute accent + grave accent. *Pes* and *clivis* are two-note neumes. In three-note neumes, the combination can take two types of shapes, triangular or linear. In triangular form, the *torculus* (grave–acute–grave) and the *porrectus* (acute–grave–acute) are distinguished according to the relative position of the sounds; in linear form, the *scandicus* and the *climacus*, depending on whether the melody ascends or descends. Since the possible combinations are even more varied, there will be the *resupinus* neumes, which end on an acute sound, the *flexus* neumes, which end on the grave, and the *subpunctis*, which are followed by several dots placed one beneath the other. There are many other combinations whose complexity has not received any name, except sometimes by more or less fanciful theorists; it is simpler to refer to them by the generic term “chains of neumes.”
Special neumes use the signs we have described but juxtapose them (*bivirga*, *trivirga*, *bipunctum*) or add other signs to them.
The *apostrophe* and its derivatives form the group of strophic neumes, which, as the name indicates, use a sign similar to the apostrophe of literary texts. There are also undulating neumes and those that use a sign, the *oriscus*, whose form varies noticeably from one region to another and even within the same manuscript, depending on the musical context or the intentions of the notator. The *oriscus* can be isolated, but more often it enters into combination, either at the beginning of a neume (*pes quassus*), at the end (*franculus*, *pes stratus*), or in the middle (*salicus*); followed by a dot, it forms the *pressus*. A final category includes neumes that cannot be classified in the preceding groups: the *trigon*, formed of three dots arranged in a triangle, and the *quilisma*, a kind of diminutive arch placed at the base of a *virga*, or a hook applied to its top, according to the scripts. Hitherto we have described the normal forms of neumes: almost all of them can be significantly modified by a final flourish to express a sound generally susceptible to graphic nuances, which distinguish rounded, square, disjointed, or epistemic forms. The first are easily understood; the last consists in the addition of a stroke, horizontal or vertical, to the neume. We may add that certain scripts use intermediate flourishes which, in such cases, are far from being a simple graphic ligature.
2. Origin of neumes. Gregorian neumes constitute a highly coherent system of notation that appears suddenly, in manuscript tradition, toward the end of the 9th century. Before the 9th century, no manuscripts are found notated with neumes, nor are neumes written in the first hand: this is the conclusion reached by a leading specialist such as E. A. Lowe, after establishing the *Corpus of Latin Codices antiquiores* (so far 5 vols., Oxford 1934–50). The system of notation will therefore
One or two generations before our oldest manuscripts were elaborated. Although the place of origin of the neumes cannot yet be precisely determined, there is no doubt that it should be sought between the Seine and the Rhine, without excluding the influence of the Anglo-Saxon milieu or, even less, the exchanges between one scriptorium and another. Without here reviving the theories proposed to explain the origin of the neumes, it will be prudent to adhere to the following points. The inventors of the neumes elaborated a notation whose starting point lay in grammatical accents; they also made use of punctuation marks and prosodic signs; they may have known both through manuscripts, especially through the treatises of grammarians, and perhaps through certain books intended for public reading.
While preserving for the acute and grave accents their primitive meaning, they gave a new meaning to the other signs. At the basis of the system lies the intention of translating a melody by means of a gesture, fixing the gesture by means of a graphic sign. Such, in its broad outlines, seems to be the process of elaboration of the neumatic systems, whether it be the Visigothic notation of Spain, the Gregorian notation of the Frankish lands, or the Byzantine notation. It may moreover be thought that the Visigothic notation is a little earlier than the Gregorian and contributed to its formation. These explanations concern the neumatic notation based on the accent and called, for this reason, accent-neumes. Parallel to it there exists another notation, that of point-neumes, which gives preponderance to points and groups of points over the accents. It has sometimes been thought that this notation is older, but it must be admitted that its testimonies are, on the contrary, more recent.
3. Regional Notations
For the various regional schools, their geographical diffusion and examples of the neumatic notation of the schools of St. Gall, Metz, Chartres and Nonantola: V. CANTO. Examples of Mozarabic notation are given in the article MOZARABIC LITURGY, vol. VIII, pl. 100.4. The Problem of Melodic Height
Accent-neumes indicate pitch in a relative and imprecise manner; they are written without a staff, “in campo aperto.” Point-neumes are more indicative of pitch. Moreover, they were soon written at regular intervals: they are then diastematic. It was not long before lines were drawn to carry the neumes. The future belonged to this procedure and not to the various attempts at phonetic notation made by the theorists of the 11th century. To satisfy every requirement it was enough, in fact, to specify the position of the semitone. This is what Guido d’Arezzo achieved (v.), by coloring the line of F in red and that of C in yellow. At the same time the custom was taken of indicating the melodic letter corresponding to these lines, and also to the other lines: from this usage derive the modern clefs.Written on the staff, generally of four lines, with letters at the clef, the neumes have changed considerably in appearance, especially in notations in which the accents had to be brought to precise intervals, with episemata to mark the exact pitch: the French notation successively became a notation of point-bonds, of small squares, of large squares. The square notation, on the other hand, replaced the others or modified them in its own image, while the German Gothic notation took on the appearance of nails driven in, which has given it the name of “nail notation.” The square notation, with its stems, after having given rise to the modern notations of figured music and polyphony (v. below), has been practiced again in the current Gregorian chant books, which moreover progressively return to ancient forms of neumes, the only ones capable of expressing certain nuances.
5. The Interpretation of Neumes
All paleographers agree in recognizing in the neumes a wealth of expression which modern notations do not possess. But one must know how to understand them: such understanding is the object of a science which has every interest in distinguishing itself from paleography properly so called. By analogy with other disciplines, it has been possible to call it musical diplomatics. Here we shall recall only some essential principles.If every melody is a succession of sounds logically organized and offering a sense to the ear and to the intelligence, and if, on the other hand, the neume, like every notation, is the graphic representation of a melody, it necessarily follows that the neume carries a meaning at once rhythmic, melodic and expressive. This meaning is known through the study of the script and its peculiarities (paleography), through the comparison of manuscripts with one another (comparative paleography), through the statistics of cases, all correlated with musical phenomena. It is moreover necessary to distinguish the neume in itself and the neume modified either in its constitution or by additions.
The rhythmic meaning of the neume is the first to appear, especially in the case of accent-neumes. A single and isolated neumatic sign doubtless has no rhythmic value in itself: it derives it from the literary text (syllabic chant) or from the musical context (melisma). But every neumatic sign which comprises at least two elements constitutes the initial cell of rhythmic synthesis.
The melodic meaning is imperfect in accent-neumes, perfect in diastematic or line notations. In themselves accent-neumes already give some indications, the simplest of which is the superiority of the virga over the punctum. It is also observed that certain notators make use of particular graphic features to mark the semitone. They also use letters, such as aequaliter (e), sursum (s), to provide supplementary melodic indication.
The expressive meaning results above all from the script: one need only think of the diversity of the pes in the St. Gall notation (8 forms for the first element) or of the scandicus in Beneventan notation (8 forms in a single manuscript). It can moreover be modified by an added element, whether expressed by a sign or by a significant letter. Finally, the style of the notator sometimes conveys the nuances of the voice through the very movement of the stroke.
These brief indications concerning “musical diplomatics” can only barely reveal the full wealth of meaning of neumatic notations. Despite the imperfections, which are especially noticeable to the musician of today but much less worrying to the musician of other times, these notations constitute an adequate translation of a perfect monody. Their evolution makes it possible to follow at a glance this radical change in musical taste, which between the 9th and the 16th centuries passes from the purity of a melodic line to the harmonic richness of polyphony.
Giacomo Houlier
P. POLYPHONIC NOTATION. — Polyphonic notation originates from the figures of square chant notation, with a continuity that becomes even more evident when observing groups of notes represented by a single sign, i.e., the “ligatures,” which graphically reproduce relative Gregorian neumes. Since it is based on the simultaneity of two or more sounds in the practice of note-against-note encounters—which was not yet harmony in the modern sense but a well-combined concomitance of multiple melodic lines—polyphonic notation from its very inception required, as a necessary condition for its existence, the concept of measure, that is, an exact criterion for determining the duration of individual sounds and the silences interspersed among them, so as to guarantee the synchronism of consonances.
The transitional period between black square notation (which remains unchanged for liturgical books in Gregorian chant to this day) and black mensural notation occurred between the end of the 12th century and the mid-13th (c. 1175–1250), during which the notation that would endure for two centuries became established. It was later modified into white mensural notation (1450–1600), and finally, after further changes, evolved into the notation now in use worldwide.
The current notation was adopted for both instruments and voices after the 17th century, whereas previously, voices and instruments often had different notations, as, for example, in ancient Greece, which used two distinct alphabetic notations for each. For instruments, particularly from the 14th to the 18th century, special notations were employed for keyboard instruments (organ, harpsichord), string instruments (lute, guitar, etc.), using different characters that, depending on the nationality (German, Spanish, Italian, French), included letters, numbers, and figures in various combinations. These were called “tablatures.”
Of the ancient alphabetic notations, only the “clefs” of C, F, and G remain in use today—signs derived from alphabet letters corresponding to musical notes placed at the beginning of each staff to indicate that, in the staff, all notes found on the line occupied by this conventional sign correspond to the note that was once assigned to that letter. Even the musical staff, now fixed at five lines (the pentagram), did not emerge all at once. As neumatic notation evolved from distinct music toward more precise criteria for determining intervals, lines began to be used around the 9th century to place the corresponding notes. Initially, these lines were incised with the tip of a stylus and later drawn in colored ink (red for F and yellow for C). The number of lines progressed from one to four (the tetagram, still used for Gregorian chant), to five (our current pentagram), and even to ten lines. Theoretical sources for the history of the musical staff include the *Musica enchiriadis* (9th century) and, in particular, Guido d’Arezzo’s *Regulae de ignoto cantu* (v.).
The development of square notation in the polyphonic field soon became identified with the development of mensural notation, as the need to establish different durations for the various parts (vocal or instrumental) required the creation of new figures: first (around 1225) the *longa* and the *brevis*, originally derived from the *virga* and the *punctum*, respectively; then, around 1250, two more figures were added: the *maxima* or *duplex longa* and the *semibrevis*, derived from a doubling of the *longa* and a halving of the *brevis*.
With these limited graphic elements, the first polyphonic forms of the *Ars antiqua* (v.) were constructed, such as: a) the *conductus*, monophonic songs, and organa dupla of Léonin (v.); b) the organa tripla and quadrupla and the clausulae of Pérotin (v.). Regarding rhythm, after the School of St-Martial in Limoges (c. 1100–50), which, following an intense production of sequences and tropes (10th–11th centuries), had transitioned to the first flowering of the organum in its pre-mensural phase, the School of Notre-Dame (c. 1175–1250) experienced, in the two aforementioned periods, an interesting and successive maturation. In terms of rhythm organized according to the six rhythmic modes (names derived from ancient Greece but restored with a different intent by the theorist Walter Odington around 1290), this took concrete form in the second period (Pérotinian), while in the first (Léoninian), modal interpretation remains doubtful and still controversial.
The expansion of the graphic repertoire brought by the introduction of the *longa* and the *brevis* corresponds to the flourishing of the *motetus* with its various vocal parts (v. ms. Montpellier Fac. de Médecine H. 196, Bamberg Ed. IV 6, etc), and is accompanied by an evolution of rhythm that, around the mid-13th century, begins to free itself from the modal meter hitherto used. Through the work of Franco of Cologne (v.), Petrus de Cruce, ODINGTON, WALTER (v.), Robert de Handlo, and others, the values of ligatures, notes, and rests were established, along with the binary and ternary subdivision of the *brevis*, which, while ternary rhythm—called perfect in analogy to the perfection of the Holy Trinity—had previously been divided only into three *semibreves*.
In the 14th century, the *minima* and the *semiminima* were added to the previous figures, resulting in a complete set of five figures that could have ternary (perfect) or binary (imperfect) values. The different interpretation to be given to the notes was indicated at the beginning of the staff by conventional signs (a square containing three lines to denote perfect mode and two for imperfect; or a circle to indicate perfect time and a semibreve for imperfect), but also, without recourse to special signs, by the use of red ink (*color*), which, alternating with black in filling the notes in ternary time, gave them imperfection, i.e., automatically binary value. If red ink was lacking, the copyist left such notes blank or empty, achieving the same effect (*note albae*, *dealbatae*, *cavatae*).
The peculiarities of the new notation are clearly and richly illustrated by the French theorist Philippe de Vitry (in Coussemaker, *Scriptores*, cited in Bibl., III, 33), but they are already masterfully outlined in Marchetto da Padova’s *Pomerium*, which marks an important turning point in the development of that Italian notation that Prosdocimus de Beldemandis, also from Padua, would summarize in his *Tractatus practicus cantus mensurabilis ad modum Italicorum*, written at the beginning of the 15th century (Montegana, 1412).
After rhythm, he studies the figures that conform to it; by around 1400, there were six: the *maxima duplex longa*, the *longa*, the *brevis*, the *semibrevis*, the *minima*, and the *semiminima*.
The rhythmic divisions of values, which find one of the first systematic treatments in Prosdocimus’s work, amount to three: *modus*, *tempus*, and *prolatio*.
*Modus* governs the relationships between the *maxima* and the *longa* (*modus maior*, or *modus maximarum*), as well as between the *longa* and the *brevis* (*modus minor*, or *modus longarum*, the *modus* par excellence in the *Ars nova*). *Tempus* governs those between the *brevis* and the *semibrevis*, and *prolatio* governs those between the *semibrevis* and the *minima*, which, being the last value added at that time, was indivisible.
Mode, time, and prolation could in turn be perfect or imperfect: in the first case the ratio maxima-longa (modus major), longa-brevis (modus minor), brevis-semibrevis (tempus), or semibrevis-minima (prolatio) was 1 to 3 (the ternary figure, that is, the perfect figure of the perfection of the Most Holy Trinity, equivalent to 3 lower figures); in the second case it was 1 to 2 (the figure taken as the unit of measurement was divided into 2 immediately lower figures). The punctus of mensural notation had 3 principal uses and names: punctus additionis or augmentationis, punctus divisionis, and punctus perfectionis; the first (which has remained in modern notation) was used only in imperfect time and, placed after a note (binary, that is, imperfect), added to it a value corresponding to half the value of the note itself; the second, used only in perfect time and perfect prolation, was equivalent to a bar line, in that it isolated a group or a note from other notes so that they would not influence one another.
The third, to which may be assimilated punctus imperfectionis, alterationis, syncopationis, etc., was still a punctus divisionis, but one that perfected or imperfected the notes to which it was appended: it was, that is, a punctus divisionis that gave a particular character to the values placed under its direct influence. The ever-increasing diffusion of binary rhythm, which had now taken its place alongside ternary rhythm with equal rights (a legacy of the Ars antiqua of the 13th century), was officially established in the early years of the 1300s with the Ars nova, which brought the multiplication of rhythms (from the simplest to the most complex) to an extraordinary richness, demanded by the forms themselves, predominantly secular and often composed for dance (rondeau, virelai, ballade in France; madrigal, ballata, caccia in Italy).
After the representative figures of Philippe de Vitry for France and Marchetto da Padova for Italy, who impressed particular characteristics on musical notation, contributing to the formation and development of French and Italian notation, by 1350 a notation had emerged that combined features of both systems and is known as mixed notation: a period of transition and tendency toward complication and mannerism that intensified toward the end of the 14th century, to decline in a process of clarification that took place in the first half of the 1400s and culminated in the establishment of white mensural notation, with which, between 1450 and 1600, Flemish, French, and Italian masters produced the highest achievements of sacred polyphonic art. This notation comprises 8 signs with their respective rests and a whole code of rules, both for the exact interpretation of ligatures and for the reciprocal relations among simple notes (not bound together). A first phase in the development of ligatures runs from the late 12th century to the mid-13th century with Franco of Cologne, whose rules remained unchanged until the 15th century, and a second phase is linked to the development of white notation after 1450. Ligatures developed from figures or neumatic groups—podatus, clivis, torculus, porrectus—and were subdivided into descending or ascending ligatures according to their origin (descending those derived from podatus, and ascending those derived from clivis). According to the number of notes of which a ligature was composed, it was called binary, ternary, quaternary, etc., and from the shape of the first or last note it was defined as «cum» or «sine proprietate», «cum» or «sine perfectione», or «cum opposita proprietate». Special rules apply to the resolution of ligatures, to be applied to the initial or final note and to the middle notes enclosed between them (which are generally to be interpreted as breves). After 1600, as the figures of greatest value—maxima, longa, and brevis—were gradually discarded, the repertory of graphic symbols, based, as the largest unit of measurement, on the semibreve, was further enriched with smaller values and their corresponding rests; the divisions implicit in every note were now only binary, even in ternary time, and thus, except for the figure of the triplet, which is a reminder of the 15th-century proportio sesquialtera or proportio hemiolia, in which every group of three notes stood against two of the same kind, every value is always decomposable and equivalent to other lower values in even numbers.
An important innovation, already hinted at sporadically in 15th-century organ tablatures (cf. Fundamentum organisandi by K. Paumann, 1452) and already generalized in 16th-century instrumental music (keyboard instruments, lute, etc.), the bar line became definitively established in both instrumental and vocal notation from the 17th century onward, although the character it assumed was not always the same. Even in the 16th century, however, the score—which, though rarely, already gathered polyphonic vocal music into layouts for an overall view, while the individual parts were usually written in separate fascicles—featured clear divisions marked by a line at the end of each measure. In both vocal and instrumental music in the 18th century, a flourishing of virtuosic ornamentation found graphic expression in embellishments (v.) and interpretive designs for dynamic, qualitative, or quantitative expression—intensity of a particular inflection, speed, rhythmic or mechanical devices or liberties—all aimed at enriching expressive possibilities and mitigating the dangers of an overly personal interpretive realization.
A particular type of musical notation for instruments is provided (in the 15th–17th centuries and beyond) by tablature, which assumes different forms and aspects depending on the country in which it arose and developed. Although this type of notation was used on a large scale for other instruments as well (for organ and keyboard instruments: German and Spanish tablatures, 14th–17th centuries; for guitar, violin, flute, etc., 17th century), its main and most widespread use was for the lute, an instrument of art that became widespread in Europe, perhaps originating in Spain, where its Arabic roots had been brought, from the 15th to the 18th century.
Italian lute tablature consisted of numbers placed on the 6 horizontal lines representing the 6 strings of the lute; rhythmic values were indicated above the staff by signs denoting the semibreve, the minima, the semiminima, and the croma.
French tablature, instead of numbers, used letters; and the staff, initially composed of 5 lines (for a 5-string lute), was expanded to 6 toward the mid-17th century, when the entire system was radically modified. Time indications are expressed by actual notes written on the staff. German tablature, the most complex of all, also starting from notation for a 5-string lute (15th century), was later enriched with the signs necessary for the added 6th string (16th century) and comprises numbers and alphabetic letters systematically interspersed below the time-signs (similar to the Italian ones) and between the bar lines.
Tablatures for folk instruments are still in use today with characters similar to 16th-century tablatures: 6 lines for the guitar, 4 for the 4-string ukulele, etc.
Of the ancient alphabetic notation, supplanted in Latin countries by Guidonian syllables, a trace remains in the nomenclature of the gamut among Anglo-Saxon and Germanic peoples, among whom the gamut “la–si” is expressed by the letters A–H. It should be noted, however, the difference observed for “si♭,” which for the Germans is symbolized by the letter B, while for the English it is symbolized by the letter H. — See pl. XL.