The Introduction of Staff Notation into Middle Europe

Abstract

When the figured bass practice, this seemingly simple innovaticn of notational technique, first appeared in the European music history it reflected, as a matter of fact, a completely novel approach to handling and surveying music, a new musical hearing proper. The new approach was both generating and subject to the notational changes the case being that it was only through the altered notational technique that the new attitude could fully materialize in the field of melody formation, rhythm, form and instrumentation, thus essentially in all areas of musical thinking. The introduction of staff notation brought along similar but even more fundamental changes. The change in musical attitude can be easily detrectred behind the innovation that appears to have been purely technical. And it marks in this instance, too, the beginning of a long process of development in music history that extended over many centuries and which would be completely unimaginable without the new possibilities and inherent inspirations of the musical notation. The introductien of staff notation is a prerequisite and at the same time a result of and an immense aid for exactly demonstrating the tonal structure and the interval relationships; it promotes the apperception of pitches through direct kinetic experiences; it renders pessible to compare simultaneously or subsequently produced sounds and last but not least to arrive at an articulated comprehension and large-scale survey of the temporal progress. Attempts at notation can, of course, be traced back to times before A. D. 1000. Byzantine and similar schools offer a symbolic presentation of the individual tones. The neumatic scripts applied in the Latin region are much more in agreement with the sensory elements of the melodic motion. The advantages of these two trends could, however, be combined through the staff notation only whereby an exactly readible musical script of expressive force came into being. The music history of the east and west deviated at this point ultimately or at least for long centuries to come, simultaneously with