Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

I. General

1. Introduction.

2. Chronology.

Notation, §I: General

1. Introduction.

The concept of notation may be regarded as including formalized systems of signalling between musicians, and systems of memorizing and teaching music with spoken syllables, words or phrases; the latter are sometimes called ‘oral notations’. The origins of written notations can often be seen to lie in them; further, they are the natural musical communication systems of non-literate societies and non-literate classes of society. The continent of Africa south of the Sahara, for example, except for the white communities, uses no written notations, but many of its indigenous peoples communicate about music through speech in the form of syllables, word patterns, the numbers of xylophone keys, the names of strings and other technical vocabulary. Even in 11th-century Europe instrumentalists had no notation, and church musicians communicated mainly through syllables and hand signs rather than through the reading of a score in rehearsal or performance.

Written notation is a phenomenon of literate social classes. In all societies it has developed only after the formation of a script for language, and it has generally used elements of that script. Some cultures are particularly notation-prone in this sense: China, Korea, Japan and Europe have each accumulated a large number of notational systems to serve different purposes. Others, until the late 19th century, have developed very few, notably the countries of the Middle East (except Turkey), South and South-east Asia.

The use of notation and the form it takes are the result of the social and cultural context in which it has been developed. It is socially significant that, while in Western Europe it was vocal music that first acquired a written notation, in Greece, Mesopotamia and Pharaonic Egypt it seems to have been instrumental music. In the latter two cultures, and in later East Asian instrumental notations, the script of language was used as part of the notation; in the former, as in the chant notations of Byzantium and Eastern Europe, of Tibet, Mongolia and Japan, non-linguistic symbols were used and script was required only for sung texts. Furthermore some notations are designed to give all necessary information, others give only a small part of what would be needed by the non-adept. In the latter, the remaining information is withheld either because it is already learnt and therefore unnecessary, or because there is a desire to keep it secret.

Broadly speaking, there are two motivations behind the use of notation: the need for a memory aid and the need to communicate. As a memory aid, it enables the performer to encompass a far greater repertory than he or she could otherwise retain and realize. It may assist the performer’s memory in music that is already basically known but not necessarily remembered perfectly; it may provide a framework for improvisation; or it may enable the reading of music at sight (this last concept is a predominantly Western one). A written notation provides the means to sketch and draft musical ideas during the composing process. As a means of communication, it preserves music over a long period; it facilitates performance by those not in contact with the composer; it equips the conductor with a set of spatial symbols by which to obtain certain responses during performance; it presents music as a ‘text’ for study and analysis, and offers the student the means of bringing it to life in his or her mind when no performance is possible; and it serves the theorist as a medium by which to demonstrate musical or acoustical laws.

Notation, §I: General

2. Chronology.

In trying to see all notations in a single chronological sweep it must be borne in mind that these developments can be seen only in their surviving remnants. A notation preserved as a musical source of a given date may be unrepresentative; a theoretical description of a notation may be ambiguous or inaccurate; a literary allusion to notational practice may take poetic licence or even be fictional. Interpretation of what survives is the first of the difficulties. Filling in the gaps between the survivals is the second, particularly when this involves not merely decades or centuries but millennia.

The earliest recognized form of writing by any civilization was the system used by the Mesopotamian civilizations of the Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians and others in the Middle East. Its pictographic origins date from at least the middle of the 4th millennium bce and its developed syllabic-logographic cuneiform system survived into the Hellenistic period and down to the 1st century ce. The hieroglyphic writing of the ancient Egyptians, a mixture of ideographs (pictures representing not merely the objects depicted but also ideas associated with those objects) and phonetic symbols, survived to about 400 ce. It is in connection with these hieroglyphs, carved on the walls of temples and tombs, that the first visual representations of musical sounds may have survived (see Cheironomy, §2 and illustrations): certain of the carvings from the Pharaonic period contain scenes of music-making that show what appears to be a system of arm, hand and finger signs by which instructors signalled details of melody and rhythm to performers (Hickmann, RBM, x, 1956, p.1 and MGG1). Moreover, some of the hieroglyphic signs themselves, from the Middle Kingdom (c2686–2181 bce) and New Kingdom (1567–1085 bce), have been interpreted as specific written musical instructions. Cheironomy may also have existed among the Jews by the 2nd millennium bce, and it is probable that some of the signs in the system of biblical accents developed by the Masoretic scholars of Tiberias during the 9th century ce and the early 10th were originally based on the cheironomic hand signs used to assist the singer in his chanting (see Cheironomy, §4; Ekphonetic notation, §2; Jewish music, §III, 2(ii)).

From ancient Mesopotamia, there is clear evidence of a system of phonetic notation, that is, descriptive musical instructions that may be viewed as skeletal notations for string instruments. This system is preserved in about 80 Akkadian cuneiform tablets and fragments dating from between 1800 and 500 bce, during which period the system was used consistently. This ‘notation’ is based on a technical Akkadian (and to a lesser extent Sumerian) music terminology that gives individual names to nine musical strings or ‘notes’ and to 14 basic terms describing intervals of the 4th and 5th that were used in tuning string instruments (according to seven heptatonic diatonic scales) and terms for 3rds and 6ths that appear to have been used to fine tune (or temper in some way) the seven notes generated for each scale. The combination of string names and interval terms is used to describe the tuning procedure and the generation of the seven scales, and forms a skeletal phonetic notation or a kind of phonetic instrumental tablature. This system was used in both northern and southern Mesopotamia and has also been found at the ancient site of Ugarit (Ras Shamra, Syria). Tablets from the latter site dating from about 1400 bce include hymn texts written in the Hurrian language followed by the standard Akkadian musical instructions for intervals and scale. Unusually, these tablets have number signs after the interval names; this ‘notational’ system is open to various interpretations, but it seems likely to have been intended for the instrumentalist accompanying the singing.

The earliest known alphabetical system of notation (i.e. a system in which each sign represents a single sound, each sound being designated by one sign) is that of Ugarit, which is preserved on clay tablets using unique cuneiform signs to represent 30 letters; it appears to have evolved from cuneiform syllabaries of the mid-2nd millennium bce in Syria-Palestine. The later North-Semitic alphabet of 22 letters, which developed towards the end of the 2nd millennium bce, was the origin of, among others, the Hebrew and Greek alphabets, both of which emerged in the early centuries of the 1st millennium bce. The first musical notation known to harness the alphabet, with its built-in ordering, to the representation of pitch was the older of the two Greek systems, the so-called ‘instrumental’ notation, which used a mixture of Greek letters and other symbols to represent a continuous diatonic series of notes over three octaves. Each letter or sign appears also rotated on to its side and also in mirror image to represent the diatonic note raised by a quarter-tone and semitone respectively. This notation must have come into existence some time before 500 bce, whereas the ‘vocal’ notation, using the Ionic alphabet, cannot be much earlier than the 5th century bce (see Greece, §I, 7 and Alypius).

An essentially ideographic system of writing existed in China probably by early in the 2nd millennium bce, with each ‘character’ of the script representing a single monosyllabic word. The earliest reference to the use of monosyllables to represent musical pitches dates from the 4th century bce; and the first detailed discussion, dating from the 2nd century bce, shows the five monosyllables (and hence written characters) gong, shang, jue, zhi and yu denoting the notes of the Chinese pentatonic scale. These monosyllables are in effect solmization syllables in that they designate the five points on the pentatonic scale, movable to any fixed pitch. On the other hand, in the 3rd century bce the earliest surviving account was given of the fixed-pitch system of the 12 lü, each pitch of which had its own name: the starting-pitch was called huangzhong (‘yellow bell’), the 5th above it linzhong (‘forest bell’), the 5th above that (i.e. the 2nd) taicou (‘great frame’) etc. Each pitch was thus represented in script by a pair of characters (see China, §II).

Reference has already been made to the addition of accents to Hebrew biblical texts. The use of such accents for the cantillation of texts is called Ekphonetic notation. A developed system of nine accents, indicated by the placing and grouping of dots, existed for Hebrew texts in the 6th century ce. This system was developed to a high degree of sophistication in the ensuing centuries. Other traditions that use ekphonetic notations include the liturgical monophonic repertories of the Syrian, Armenian and Byzantine Churches.

The earliest clear examples of instrumental tablature date from the 6th and 8th centuries ce. The first is an elaborate set of technical instructions for the Chinese zither, the qin, directing how to play the piece entitled Youlan. The system, known as wenzi pu, remained in existence until the 10th century. A tablature notation for the Japanese lute, the biwa, dates from 768 and derives from the Chinese court tradition.

The earliest surviving neumatic notations for Western plainchant date from the 9th century: notably the stroke (accent) neumes of St Gallen in Switzerland, in which finely drawn lines, curves and hooks represent the rise and fall of the melodic line graphically; and the point neumes of Palaeo-Frankish, Messine (or Lorraine) and Aquitanian sources. From this century also dates the earliest survival of Byzantine ekphonetic notation. It may have been not long after this that neumatic notation first came into use in Tibet for the singing of Buddhist chant, possibly by influence from the ekphonetic system of the Syrian Church transmitted by the Nestorians (see Syrian church music, §6; Tibetan music, §II, 4; Buddhist music, §2).

In the 9th century dasian notation, which in its rotation of notational signs has a peculiar similarity to Greek ‘instrumental’ notation, was used to notate the earliest surviving Western polyphony: the so-called ‘parallel’ and ‘free’ organum of Musica enchiriadis. There were also the first traces of an alphabetical notation for Arabic theory – not used in musical practice – though its earliest survivals date only from the 13th century.

The Chinese gongche notation seems to have originated in the Central Asian kingdom of Kuqa before the 6th century ce, but only reappears in extant sources from the Song dynasty (960–1279). While at first it was, perhaps, a form of tablature for the double reed pipe bili, in later centuries it was used as a more general solfeggio type of notation for both vocal and instrumental music. The 10th century saw the change to the new jianzipu tablature for the Chinese qin: a highly compact notation in which information about right-hand plucking and left-hand positioning, duration and embellishment is packed into a single complex symbol (see §II, 6, 8 below; see also China, §IV, 4 (ii) (a) and Qin, especially fig.2).

From the 10th century to the 12th survive the earliest partbooks for Japanese court wind and string instruments. These are primarily tablatures, but koto zither notation is also one of the earliest number notations (see below, §5; see also Japan, §III, 3).

The 11th century saw in western Europe the innovations associated with Guido of Arezzo: the staff, the Guidonian hand (a type of cheironomy) and solmization syllables; in eastern Europe the earliest neumes in Byzantine and Slavonic manuscripts; and in the Middle East the use of ekphonetic notations in Georgian and Armenian manuscripts. The 12th century saw the beginnings of sumifu neumatic notation in the Japanese secular epic, in which teardrop-shaped lines placed to the left of written text signify stereotyped melodic patterns; and the 13th century the beginning of goin-hakase for Buddhist chant, in which the angle at which a short line is placed indicates the pitch of the note to be sung, and gomafu notation (related to sumifu) for Japanese noh drama (see §II, 7 and fig.13 below; see also Japan, §III, 2).

South Asian solmization syllables date back to at least the 4th and 5th centuries ce. In the Nātyaśāstra seven pitches are represented by the syllables sa ri ga ma pa dha ni, which are said to be shorthand for the Sanskrit sadja rsabha gāndhāra madhyama pañcama dhaivata and nisāda. Widdess (1996, p.393), however, asserts that the short forms are oral in origin and not abbreviations. Although these pitches are named in the Nātyaśāstra the earliest known South Asian notation dates from the 7th–8th century ce and is found on a rock inscription at Kudumiyamalai in Tamil Nadu (fig.1). Syllables used as mnemonics for drum-patterns are also described in the Nātyaśāstra, and particularly in the 13th-century Sangīta-ratnākara.

Meanwhile, Western notation was undergoing fundamental changes, with the formation of square notation in the 12th century, the development of the rhythmic modes and the evolution of the mensural system with its highly complex rhythmic possibilities. Contemporary with the peak of this development, in the mid-15th century, was the formation, in Korea, of the only alphabet among all the East Asian civilizations. Following soon on that was the importation and adaptation of Chinese notations for Korean use: the yulchapo, which took over the abbreviated names of the Chinese lü but pronounced them in Korean; the kŏmun’go tablature for the six-string zither, which adopted the compact Chinese jianzi pu but incorporated Korean letters into it (see §II, 8 and fig.16 below); the kongch’ŏk po, which adapted the Chinese gongche notation for ritual melodies; and the ‘five-note abbreviated notation’ oŭmyakpo which corresponds to the ancient Chinese solmization system but uses a central degree of the scale kung (the lowest of the five Chinese degrees) and ranges outward from that using numbers and prefixes: sangil (‘above one’) for the note immediately above it, hasam (‘below three’) for the third note below it, and so on. With these went the invention of a Korean mensural notation, chŏngganbo: a grid system, in which each space corresponds to one time unit and into which a pitch symbol from one of the pitch notations could be placed as required (see also Korea, §2).

During the 15th and 16th centuries the first Western instrumental tablatures developed (though they may possibly have begun in the 13th century), the earliest being for keyboard instruments and the lute family. The 16th century saw the gradual breakdown of the proportional mensural system of values into a fixed-value system in which each note value contained two of the next value down. At the same time, unmeasured square notation was still used for plainchant, and for monophonic secular music in Germany, as was neumatic notation – the ‘Reformed’ notation – in Byzantine and Russian sources.

It was probably in the 16th century (though possibly earlier) that Balinese solmization syllables for gamelan compositions in the pelog system came to be written down in Balinese script as a notation. Only at the end of the 19th century did the nut andha (‘ladder notation’) of Central Java used in the Yogyakarta kraton manuscripts come into use: a grid system, with dots not unlike the Western staff (though vertical rather than horizontal; see fig.2 ). Another system, nut ranté (‘chain notation’) using six horizontal lines, with dots above or below the lines representing pitches and connected with ‘chains’, came into use only a few years before that; at the same time a number notation for pitches, nut angka, also known as kepatihan, was introduced.

The 19th and 20th centuries saw in Western notation a formalization of the orchestral score, an increasing use of non-Italian verbal indications as auxiliary signs to staff notation, and a more detailed specification of all parameters of sound in an attempt to prescribe every detail of performance. This has brought with it proposals for the reform of notation, in particular two: Klavarskribo and Equitone. Compositional indeterminacy imposed new demands upon staff notation that at first were answered by ‘space–time notation’ and later by specially designed systems. Both representational and technical notations have also been devised for electronic music.

Many East Asian notations came under the influence of staff notation during the 19th century, and new ones arose using Arabic numbers (mostly based on the Galin-Paris-Chevé method see below, §II, 5) and recently developed solmization-syllable systems. Just as the writing of microtonal music by Western composers in the 20th century placed strain upon the rigid pitch representation of staff notation and caused the introduction of quarter-tone and sixth-tone accidentals and signs for microtonal inflection, so too the need to transcribe non-Western music has strained the capacity of staff notation. Two new methods have been developed: that of the Melograph, an invention by Charles Seeger that traces a pitch–time graph immediately above a volume–time graph; and a device by Karl Dahlback that produces two similar graphs by means of a cathode-ray tube.

Taking a historical perspective, between about 500 bce and the 10th century ce most of the world’s principal alphabetical and ideographic notations (many of the latter probably arising out of solmization-syllable systems) were established. Some of the ideographic notations were instrumental tablatures (see §II, 5 below), all of them from East Asia; Western tablatures developed later. Towards the end of this period was another in which accents were used as notational signs: this is concentrated particularly in the period from the 5th century to the 11th ce, although the origins of some systems may be earlier. Most of the world’s neumatic systems seem to have developed in the surprisingly narrow period between the 9th century and the 12th: neumes in Western Europe, in Byzantium and Eastern Europe, in Japan and probably also in Tibet. Number notations are far later developments: apart from the use of numbers in Chinese qin tablature of the 10th century and Japanese koto tablature by the 12th, they arose in Korea in the 15th century, in Western tablatures in the 16th and thereafter with increasing popularity in the 19th and 20th centuries.

For general bibliography see end of §II.

Notation