Originally music was learnt aurally from the composer but, to ensure the preservation of music, a notational system was in demand. Gregorian chant was an important development as it was the first step in defining a mental
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representational system or reference which gave practical music its first relation to a visual dimension. Over 300 forms of a cappella singing developed in the Roman Catholic churches across Europe, Africa and the Middle East. During the eighth century, Gregorian chant became the most popular form of chant in Europe. It is debatable whether the bulk of the melodic constructions in Gregorian chant originated from France or from Rome (Taruskin 2010 pp. 89-93). Gregorian chant is named after the sixth and seventh century Pope St. Gregory I (the Great). It is said that Pope George the Great stated that Gregorian chant was inspired by the Holy Spirit (Taruskin 2010 pp. 34-35).
Books consisting of notated Gregorian chant only appeared in the tenth century. Prior to the tenth century it was a luxury to notate music, as paper and quills were expensive supplies and very few people outside of the church were educated, thus they could not notate music (Taruskin 2010 p. 115). Chant notation was represented in neumes, symbols that indicated the movement of notes going higher or lower. These were indicated with signs such as the “virga”, which indicated moving higher in pitch with the voice and the “porrectus” (N), which indicated singing higher, then lower and then higher again. There were many more neumes that were initially used for choral music, also known as Gregorian chant or Plainchant. The neumes were originally placed above the text. Neumes did not indicate exact pitch (Taruskin 2010 pp. 293-300). An anonymous document called the Alia musica depicted the first staff line in red ink and named it F, which is still the case in our bass clef today. Soon thereafter, a yellow line was added above the red line, named middle C (Taruskin 2010 pp. 117-119).
In the tenth century the letters of the tetrachord, D; E; F; G were recorded and named the Dasia notation. Neumes did not indicate exact pitch until the 11th
century and oral tradition was required (Taruskin 2010 pp. 116-117). Thereafter a six lined staff indicating the spaces between the lines was created by Hucbald and rather than neumes he used text syllables in the spaces. He also indicated whole tones and semitones for the first time, which he marked with a “T” (Taruskin 2010 pp. 120-124). Guido of Arezzo was the first person to create the
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four lined staff with neumes written on top of and on the lines. The four lined staff is still recognised today as the common Plainchant Staff. The grand staff at a point consisted of eleven lines that linked the treble and the bass clef as one entity. The five lined staff was created in the 12th century, but was not recognised
until the 17th century. Guido created the tonic Sol-fa. Originally his Sol-fa system
was written as: Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Sa. He also created the Hexachords which were six tone scales that required a B-flat. The Hexachord without the B- flat was called Hexachordum Naturale, which indicated that the scale was natural; this was the inception of accidentals. Neumes altered after Guido’s time, into square shapes rather than movement symbols. with the “virga” becoming a square with a tail (Taruskin 2010 pp. 148-155).
In the beginning of the 12th century, music notation was the first notation that
could be interpreted without oral instruction as it represented exact pitches, even though there were no recorded rhythmic measures. By the late 12th century there
was a demand for a new realm of music notation named “ars mensurabilis”. The entomology of this word is measured time, or rhythm as it is called today (Taruskin 2010 pp. 293-296). Music notation that included rhythm appeared in the 13th century. Although it did provide single note rhythms, the notation was
mainly based on the ligatures. Rhythm developed steadily throughout the 13th
century and by the 14th century, while signs such as the brevis, semibrevis, longa,
duplex longa and maxima were commonly used to represent rhythm in music notation (Taruskin 2010 pp. 251-252, Metzinger 2015).
By the 15th century more signs were created and set values were assigned to
tones; by the end of the 15th century, Josquin des Prés created the first sharp
signs that were originally indicated as a crossed out “B” (Taruskin 2010 pp. 649- 651).
This section has highlighted the fact that the journey of music representation was a slow but steady one. What I found most interesting was which elements of practical music were historically thought to have been the most important to
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represent via notation. Pitches were focussed on for many centuries prior to the rhythms being explored and implemented in music notation.
I interpreted this with regards to my study as the way in which I was going to create variables that represented chess moves into sound. I surmised that if I started creating variables with the same steady progressions as in the Gregorian chant era, other developments such as rhythm could be designed and implemented, in a similar logical succession, at a later stage. As a result I established that it was best to first focus on creating the variables which would represent chess moves translated into pitch.