Medieval Music: Origins of Notation, (part 3)
So far, we have looked at a Saint Benedict and Saint Gregory as key figures within the Western European civilizations of the medieval period as being responsible much of the foundations through which modern written music notation could emerge. It is important to understand that there were other forms of written music during this time. Western Europe was, however, where some of the fundamental elements of today’s standard for written notation took hold. Regular daily ceremonial practice, structured ritual, and civic demand for performance were all ensconced in the communal daily lives resulting from religious pioneers of Christianity in the west. Similarly, the Byzantine Empire of the Eastern Mediterranean developed variations of daily prayer and practice that flourished through repetition. This transcended specific ideologies, as the same requirements persisted in various mono and poly theological ceremonies throughout the world. Arabic, Greek, Armenian, and many other culture’s religious rites contain some degree of detail in their attempts to document melodic passages.
Babylonian cuneiform tablets from as far back as 1500 B.C.E. give descriptions and details about instrumentation and music’s functionary purpose. The ancient Greek scholars deconstructed ratios, intervals, and modes through mathematics while coupling melodic principles and philosophical debate. The Byzantine Empire produced impressive systems that used Greek theoretical categories (melos, genos, harmonia, systema) impacting pre-Islamic and Persian music composition. All of these classifications were not as specific to pitch, rhythm, and meter as the notation system that emerged in Western cultures during the 9th century. After the impacts of clergy like Benedict and Gregory, the Frankish rulers and Papacy recognized the power that an organized musical component had upon the solace that Christian religious services brought to the hard lives of Medieval peasantry. It was through the ruling classes desire to stabilize the often-unreliable oral transmission of these practices that our next step in modern music notation emerges.
An author whose life we know little about is credited with one of the earliest works of notation for Gregorian and Plainsong chant in Western Europe. His name was Aurelianus Reomensis and we only can surmise about his life what is inferred by his writings. He was a member of the monastery at Saint Jean de Réôme in eastern France and he was expelled for unknown reasons. He wrote the Musica Disciplina between 840 and 850, possibly as a penance to regain favor, and also at the request of his friends who needed his expertise. This treatise was vital to music notation as it included several components that would link written record to melodic transcription. Completed during the Carolingian Renaissance (during the late 8th thru the 9th centuries; the first of three Medieval Renaissance periods of the middle ages), it included details of eight Greek modes, including (on the insistence of Charlemagne) an additional 4 tones for a total of 12. The Roman church modes of the liturgical songs were built on these modes and the Musica Disciplina provided the first notation that described more than just a vague description of the notes. It included several lists and sketches of over 100 chants. While it only showed melodic contours and prevented someone who did not know the music already from its specific performance, it made huge leaps in the process of modern notation.
The scholar and music theorist Isidore of Seville, while writing in the early 7th century, considered that "unless sounds are held by the memory of man, they perish, because they cannot be written down." (Isidore of Seville, p. 95) While Reomensis helped us with the scripture of melody, the De Mensurabili Musica, a treatise written by Johannes de Garlandia in the 13th century would explain a set of 6 rhythmic patterns and form the model for their documentation. Guido d'Arezzo, an Italian music theorist from the 10th century developed standard staff for neumes to be noted on and applied solmization syllables based on a hymn written by Lombard historian John the Deacon, (Otten (1910). These final elements would complete the basic ingredients that would allow composers to build upon more than just what they could retain within their own memory.
It is strange to think that a time in European history associated with the fall of Roman Imperial rule and its aftermath of warring kings, plague, and religious crusades, some of the most fundamental achievements in music take place. One of the most well-preserved composers of this early history of Medieval music was Hildegard of Bingen. Her music would be lost until 1979, but now there are hundreds of recordings of her works and several biographies. We will read more about her in the next chapter of Medieval music history, but for now, lets enjoy the choral performances of Monks Of The Abbey Of Notre Dame:
Thanks for reading!
References for this article:
· Isidore of Seville (2006). The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville (PDF). translated with introduction and notes by Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, and Oliver Berghof, with the collaboration of Muriel Hall. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-83749-1.
· Christensen, Thomas. The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 628
· Otten, J. (1910). "Guido of Arezzo". The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved 30 May 2010.
· Owen Hopkin, Hildegard of Bingen: life and music of the great female composer. https://www.classicfm.com/composers/bingen/guides/discovering-great-composers-hildegard-von-bingen/