Music Notation and Printing

Music Notation & Music Printing Music notation has come a long way over many years. Before notation or even printing many types of early music was passed down from generation to generations (just like stories) causing it to evolve over time. That is how you would hear music, copy music, and memorize music. Notation is used for consistency and precision and music printing is used to pass along songs from many years ago to composers and musicians of today. Without music notation it would be extremely difficult for musicians and singers to read music, in fact it would be nearly impossible.

So how did notation come to be? During the Middle Ages music was created specifically for a specific genre of the church called the Mass. During this time music was still memorized, and with all the new music, it became difficult to keep on adding material.

In the twelfth century a monk named Guido D'azarro came up with a method for keeping the choir together. He would point to a spin on his hand which would indicate a pitch. This became known as the Guido Hand Method. Guido soon dropped the method however, because the music became more complex. He began to draw a red line through the neums (square notes that indicated what direction the pitch was directed) to indicate where a specific voice range was centered (alto voice). Next he added more lines to control more voices. For the bass and tenor vocal part, Guido added more lines and marked the tenor line in yellow with the starting pitch of "f". Guido had not fixed a clef to a specific line so he had pitches starting anywhere and on any line which made reading music difficult. In the next century successors to Guido still experimented with adding lines to the staff. However, it would take another couple of centuries for our current grand staff to be adopted.

During this time most of the music notation was found in highly decorative manuscripts called illuminated manuscripts. These manuscripts were written and decorated by hand. By 1440 this would all change. A German inventor by the name of Johannes Gutenberg invented a printing process that, with refinements and increased mechanization, remained the principle means of printing until the 20th century. This was the very first example of mass book production. Books were produced by and for the Church using the process of wood graving. This would require the printer to cut away the background, leaving the area that was to be printed. When a page was complete, often comprising a number of blocks joined together, it would be inked and a sheet of paper was then pressed over it for an imprint.

Music printing was not an easy thing to accomplish when it first started. The main difficulty was printing staff lines. How could you print notes drawn on top of staff lines? The first book that contained music was the Mainz Psalter and it was produced by Gutenberg's successors. The book did not actually print music,