Music Notation

 

Music and Media
3 November 2003

Class Format

• Introduction
• Music Notation
• Music Engraving
• Modern “Engraving” Software
• Mini-Orchestration Lab
• Questions

A Brief Overview of the History of Music Notation

            The ancestors of modern symbolic music notation originated in the Catholic Church, as monks developed methods to put plainchant (sacred songs) to paper. The earliest of these ancestral systems, from the 8^th century, did not originally utilize a staff, and used neums (or neuma or pneuma), a system of dots and strokes that were placed above the text. Although capable of expressing considerable musical complexity, they could not exactly express pitch or time and served mainly as a reminder to one who already knew the tune, rather than a means by which one who had never heard the tune could sing it exactly at sight.

            To address the issue of exact pitch, a staff was introduced consisting originally of a single horizontal line, but this was progressively extended until a system of four parallel, horizontal lines was standardized on. The vertical positions of each mark on the staff indicated which pitch or pitches it represented (pitches were derived from a musical mode, or key). Although the 4-line staff has remained in use until the present day for plainchant, for other types of music, staffs with differing numbers of lines have been used at various times and places for various instruments. The modern system of a universal standard 5-line staff was first adopted in France, and became widely used by the 16^th century (although the use of staffs with other numbers of lines was still widespread well into the 17^th century).

            Because the neum system arose from the need to notate songs, exact timing was initially not a particular issue as the music would generally follow the natural rhythms of the Latin language. However, by the 10^th century a system of representing up to four note lengths had been developed. These lengths were relative rather than absolute, and depended on the duration of the neighboring notes. It was not until the 14^th century that something like the present system of fixed note lengths arose. Starting in the 15^th century, vertical bar lines were used to divide the staff into sections. These did not initially divide the music into measures of equal length (as most music then was far less rhythmic than in later periods), but appear to have been introduced as an aid to the eye for “lining up” notes on different staffs that were to be played or sung at the same time. The use of regular measures became commonplace by the end of the 17^th century.

Music Engraving

When we know what symbols to print, we have to decide where to put them so the result looks pleasing. This art is called music engraving. The term derives from the traditional process of music printing. Only a few decades ago, sheet music was made by cutting and stamping the music into zinc or pewter plates in mirror image. The plate would be inked, and the depressions caused by the cutting and stamping would hold ink. An image was formed by pressing paper to the plate. The stamping and cutting was completely done by hand. Making corrections was cumbersome, so engraving had to be done correctly in one go. Of course, this was a highly specialized skill

• Music engraving is a traditional craft, and was learned in practice. An accomplished master had to complete around 10 years of practice.
• Most of the knowledge was passed from master to apprentice during practical training. Consequently, little has been explicitly laid down about the rules of elegant engraving.
• Finally, engraving is about selecting proper distance and blackness for scores. The quality of the end result must judged visually. This is virtually impossible to capture in formal rules.

Modern “Engraving” Software

• Finale, Sibelius, and their competitors
  
  Is the popularity of programs in their availability, or in their functionality?
  
   
• Accessibility, ease of use, quality of output
  
  Are “easy to use” and “high quality output” ideals that can’t combined?
  
   
• Design: Musicians or Programmers?
  
  Who designs these tools for software music writing?
  
   
• Engraving Tools: Complex or simple?
  
  Just how much control does the end-user need?
  
   
• Power in the hands of the common musician.
  
  Does being able to notate and publish your own music empower you?

Music Engraving Lab

            After the fiasco of the past two weeks getting the recording software to work, I think that this following lab will work out a little better until we get the kinks in the software and hardware setup in the music lab solved.

            The following lecture will cover some of the general details involved in orchestrating a short work for 2-4 voices into something a bit larger using Finale, Sibelius, or GNU Lilypond. It is the goal of this lab for you to learn a little bit about several of the major engraving tools available to you electronically and develop some skills in producing your own printed sheet music (if you don’t do it already, even if you have, I’m sure you haven’t tried writing scripts in Lilypond yet!).

            After this lecture, links to relevant information and program documentation for the software we will be using for this lab will be posted on the class web page.

            You will need to check the page sometime after Tuesday to see the new materials. The detailed overview of this lab assignment will be made available online, and as a class handout next week.