There are three major points of dispute about the early history of neumatic notation.
The first involves the date of the first chant books to employ it throughout. It had long
been assumed that these were the earliest such books preserved, two graduals and a
cantatorium dating from ca. 900. Recently, however, Kenneth Levy has argued that a
fully notated gradual must have existed in the time of Charlemagne (d. 814). The second
debate has to do with origins. The dominant notion for several decades was that the
neumes developed from the classical accents (acute, grave, circumflex, etc.); competing
theories see their source elsewhere, for example, in the punctuation of Carolingian
manuscripts or in cheironomy, the gestures employed by a cantor directing a group of
singers. The third area of controversy is that of the genealogical relationships of the
regional neumatic styles. The various French types play a key role in this because of the
obvious antiquity of Paleo-Frankish neumes from Picardy and Hainaut and their
purported relationship to the later Breton and Lorraine neumes. Kenneth Levy, again, has
recently advanced original views on both the origins and genealogy of neumes.
What remains uncontroversial about neumatic notation is its immense significance as
the source from which the notation of all western music derives. It can fairly be said to be
one of the principal “inventions” of the European Middle Ages.
James McKinnon
[See also: GREGORIAN CHANT; MUSIC THEORY; MUSICA ENCHIRIADIS;
MUSICAL NOTATION (12TH–15TH CENTURIES)]
Apel, Willi. Gregorian Chant. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1958.
Corbin, Solange. Die Neumen. Cologne: Volk, 1977.
Levy, Kenneth. “Charlemagne’s Archetype of Gregorian Chant.” Journal of the American
Musicological Society 40(1987):1–30.
——. “On the Origin of Neumes.” Early Music History 7 (1987):59–90.
MUSICAL NOTATION (12TH-15TH
CENTURIES)
. During the late 12th and early 13th centuries, square notation became the predominant
type of notation in most of western Europe for plainchant (for which it is still used
today), secular monophony, and both liturgical and secular polyphony. There are three
basic note shapes. The virga has a broad, square notehead, and the descending stem is a
slender vertical downward extension. The punctum differs only by not having a stem. A
diamond-shaped “rhomboid,” created by setting the nib at a ninety-degree angle, was
used to inscribe a descending series of notes, called currentes or coniuncturae.
Single Notes (figurae simplices) of
Square Notation.
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