neumes varied considerably from region to region, while maintaining a basic familial
relationship). Neumes of from one to three notes were common and those of four or more
relatively rare. They were written over the text of the chant—later and by a different
hand, one concludes, from frequently encountered spacing discrepancies. If deficient
because of its vagueness about pitch, neumatic notation served as an effective memory
aid to those who were accustomed to sing the chants by heart and was capable of
recording subtle nuances of performance. For example, liquescent neumes, variant shapes
of the basic neumes, signaled a less straightforward mode of vocalization (not clearly
understood today), made necessary by textual peculiarities like double consonants. There
were also the “Romanian letters,” small letters written in close proximity to the neumes,
which could indicate rhyth
mic nuances: t, for example, standing for trahere (“to draw out”), and c, for celeriter
(“quickly”), suggesting a slower or faster singing of the affected notes.
Theoretical writers of the 11th century lamented the loss of these subtleties as
neumatic notation sacrificed them in its quest to indicate pitch more precisely. The exact
notation of pitch was no secret to their predecessors; Carolingian theorists had employed
both graphic and alphabetic systems that clearly represented the pitches of short musical
examples. These systems were cumbersome, however, compared with the simple addition
of neumes to a texted page. Early in the 11th century, in any case, the neumatic notation
of Aquitanian manuscripts indicated exact pitches by an expedient known as heightening
or diastemmatry. These Aquitanian neumes, written for the most part as separate dots or
short strokes for each note and lacking the cursive forms of other neumatic styles, were
placed on the page as if on an imaginary graph; while a single drypoint line was inscribed
to serve as a basic reference point. Not much later, inked lines began to be drawn in the
neumations of several regions; generally, f was indicated by a red line and the c above it
by a yellow line. It was only a matter of time until two more lines were added to create
the standard medieval four-line staff. The staff was not particularly hospitable to the
graphic eccentricities of the various neumatic styles, and by the 13th century they had
coalesced into just two types. The square notation found in modern chant books
developed from the French neumes of north-central France. This notation came to be
employed throughout France, England, Italy, and Spain; a distinctly different style was
common in Germany and to the east, the Hufnagelschrift, so called from its virga, which
has the appearance of a horseshoe nail.
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 1228