Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

5. Alphabetical, numerical and solmization notations.

The most important type of notation to be considered here is Tablature, which is fully discussed in its practical aspects under its own heading. For more detailed information the reader is referred to Wolf’s Handbuch der Notationskunde (1913–19), Apel’s Notation of Polyphonic Music, 900–1600 (1942, rev. 5/1961) and Rastall's Notation of Western Music (1983 rev. 2/1998).

(i) Keyboard tablatures.

(ii) Tablatures for plucked string instruments.

(iii) Tablatures for other instruments.

(iv) Vocal notations.

Notation, §III, 5: Alphabetical, numerical and solmization notations

(i) Keyboard tablatures.

Wolf suggested that a passage in the treatise of Anonymus 4 (c1275) implies the existence of instrumental notation in the 13th century (Wolf, 1919, 5, referring to the passage in Reckow’s edition, Der Musiktraktat des Anonymus 4, 1967, i, 40, ll.24ff). No known example survives from that date, but the earliest known keyboard sources are nearly all in tablature, which is a distinctive instrumental notation. The term ‘tablature’ generally signifies a notational system using letters of the alphabet or other symbols not found in ordinary staff notation, and which generally specifies the physical action required to produce the music from a specific instrument, rather than an abstract representation of the music itself. The latter qualification, though perhaps the primary one, does not apply to the German organ tablatures of the late Middle Ages and later: in these, letters are used to identify pitches rather than finger positions.

Most surviving keyboard sources up to the early 16th century are notated in the so-called old German organ tablature. This term is used even though the earliest source of all, the 14th-century Robertsbridge Codex (GB-Lbl Add.28550), is of unknown origin and has features of 14th-century Italian mensural notation (see Tablature, fig.1). 15th-century German tablatures include those of Adam Ileborgh (1448, in a private collection; Tablature, fig.2) and Conrad Paumann (1452, Fürstliche Stolberg’sche Bibliothek, Wernigerode, Zb 14), and the Buxheimer Orgelbuch (D-Mbs Cim.352b; fig.130). Virdung’s Musica getutscht (1511) and Schlick’s Tabulaturen etlicher lobgesang und lidlein (1512) are the earliest known printed keyboard music and there are several early 16th-century manuscript tablatures from the regions of Switzerland and Germany near the Rhine (e.g. fig.131) and from Poland (the tablature of Jan z Lublina): for further details see Sources of keyboard music to 1660. Each of these early sources generally displays notational idiosyncrasies, but in all of them the top voice is notated in a void or full mensural staff notation and the other voices in alphabetical notation, the letters corresponding with the names of the notes. In both parts of the notation accidentals are specified; in the mensurally notated voice, this may be with unusual signs such as downward stems with slashes. As in most later tablatures special rhythm signs above the letters specify the durations of the notes; they were sometimes joined with beams, as in the 15th-century Buxheimer Orgelbuch.

The number and variety of keyboard sources increase rapidly for the period after 1500. In Italy and France there are printed keyboard sources, using mensural notation throughout, as in the earlier Faenza Codex (see Sources of keyboard music to 1660, fig.1). Examples are Cavazzoni’s Recerchari, motetti, canzoni (1523) and the series of keyboard collections published in France by Attaingnant from the 1530s (fig.132). This keyboard mensural notation is closer in a number of respects to 19th- and 20th-century mensural notation than to contemporary vocal notation, for example in the use of bar-lines, but complex score notation was not very well suited to movable-type printing and came into its own only after the introduction of music engraving. Nevertheless score notation remained normal in French and Italian keyboard music, as it was later in English keyboard sources (see Sources of keyboard music to 1660, §2(vi)); it was cultivated either in the modern two-staff form or as the partitura (see §4(viii) above).

From about 1570 the old German organ tablature was superseded in German-speaking areas by a new German organ tablature, in which letters were used as in the earlier system but now for the highest voice as well as the others (fig.133). This alphabetical notation was supplemented by a uniform system of rhythm signs, derived from those of Italian lute notation. The change may have been due in part to the difficulty and cost of printing the mensurally notated top voice. This system became widely diffused in northern Germany in the 17th century and survived into the 18th, latterly mostly in manuscripts written by organists, including J.S. Bach, for their own use (see Bach, §III, 7 and fig.7). It was used by Buxtehude for vocal and single-line instrumental as well as keyboard music (for illustration, see Buxtehude, Dieterich, and Winternitz, 1955, ii, pl.7). A curious mixture of this system, used only for the pedal line, with ordinary mensural notation occurs in the Tabulatuur-boeck van psalmen en fantasyen of Anthoni van Noordt (1659; facs. in Wolf, ii, 263); fig.134 shows another curious and in several respects anomalous alphabetical (?) keyboard notation from early 17th-century France.

The only other major keyboard tradition to use tablature was that of Spain. In Bermudo’s Declaración de instrumentos musicales (1555) various systems are mentioned, using numerals to represent the keys of the keyboard. The latter may be numbered consecutively throughout, or the white keys may be numbered consecutively and the others provided by supplementary accidentals; or the white keys within each octave may be numbered from 1 to 7, with accidentals and octaves distinguished by diacritical marks. Rhythm signs are placed above the music, defining the durations in the fastest-moving part (see Tablature, fig.3). Such systems are also found in Italy, in the Spanish-influenced Intavolatura de cimbalo of Antonio Valente (1576), and they persisted into the 17th century. There is also slight evidence of the use of comparable tablatures with letters or numerals for psaltery music.

Notation, §III, 5: Alphabetical, numerical and solmization notations