From Mistress to Master: The Origins of Polyphonic Music and as a Visible Language

Abstract

Music is affected by the notation in which it is recorded. The system of notation devised between 900 and 1200 A.D. in the West allowed composers to be analytical about simultaneous sounds; subsequent development of vocal and instrumental art music is a direct outgrowth of that medieval interest in harmony and the notation that allowed its studious investigation. That notation employs principles familiar today. A system for specifying rhythmic values was introduces in the twelfth century, with the result that separate voice parts could be distributed on an expensive parchment page more economically. Score arrangement returned with the mass production of paper. A vast increase in the number of rhythmic signs around 1325 led composers to explore the limits of their notation, with the result that much of the late fourteeth-century repertory was written in an extremely complex manner; composers became interested in the visual appearance of a composition and designed staff lines in the shape of a harp, a heart, a circle, etc.