Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century

(Marvins-Underground-K-12) #1

The contour-based Carolingian neumes follow an entirely different principle of representation. It is
the only system that has direct relevance to the history of Western music, because out of it developed the
notation that is familiar to every reader of this book, the one that has served as graphic medium for
practically all music composed in what we consider to be our own continuous (or at least traceable)
musical tradition.


FIG.    1-4 Easter  Introit,    Resurrexi,  as  it  appears in  three   neumated    manuscripts from    the Frankish    territories.    (a) From    a
cantatorium, or soloist’s chant book, prepared at the Swiss monastery of St. Gallen early in the tenth century (before 920). (b)
This may be the oldest version of the chant to have survived into modern times; it comes from a graduale, or book of chants for
the Mass, prepared in Brittany in the late ninth or early tenth century and kept at the municipal library of Chartres, near Paris.
It was destroyed toward the end of World War II. (c) From a graduale prepared perhaps 250 years later (early twelfth century) in
the cathedral town of Noyon in northern France and kept today at the British Library in London. By this time the neumes might
have been written on a staff to fix their pitches precisely, but the scribe did not avail himself of this notational innovation—
indicating that the notation still served as a reminder to the singer of a melody learned orally and memorized.
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