The Birth of Neume Notation

Before the staff, neume signs recorded the rise and fall of chant melody for the first time.

Related

MedievalClefVoice classification

Time and place

Ninth to eleventh centuries, in the monasteries of the Frankish and German lands. Scribes drew small signs above the chant text to show where the melody moved; these signs are neumes. Manuscripts from St Gall, Laon and Winchester preserve the earliest styles.

What happened

Early neumes recorded contour, not exact pitch, and singers still supplied the rest from memory. Later scribes placed the signs beside a reference line, then on four lines, so intervals became readable. In the eleventh century Guido of Arezzo joined lines, spaces and solmisation into a teaching method. Neumes had become a record of melody.

What changed

For the first time music could be copied and carried without a singer's memory. A chant could travel to another monastery, pitch and solmisation grew apart, and measured notation, the five-line staff and polyphony gained a foundation. Liturgical unity also depended on these portable books.

Listen to the turn

Begin with the opening of Asperges me, where one syllable stretches into several notes. Then hear the close of Alma Redemptoris Mater, where the line returns to the same final and the mode works like an invisible track. Finally Hildegard's voice circles within a narrow range, with no time signature and no barlines. That freedom is the breath of the neume age.

Related

This turn belongs to Medieval; see Clef and Voice classification.

Sources

• Grove Music Online, entry "Neume" — history and terminology checked, not quoted
• Willi Apel, Gregorian Chant (Indiana University Press, 1958) — repertory and liturgy checked, not quoted

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.