history of music notation

I am trying to ascertain the period of some sheet music I recently purchased by the style of notation. This music features square shaped notes, four lines (instead of the usual 5), and clefs that look like a group of three squares. All the notes are solid black and square with a tail. This particular sheet music is illuminated(hand drawn) on large folio sized paper sheets.

Does anyone know the history of music notation, or a good resource/book?

Thanks!

It’s Gregorian notation, for Gregorian chant. Here’s a good introduction.

its plainchant notation from the middleages

I really should be able to give you a great explination on it but being immature and disinterested in all music history before Messiaen in my first years of music school I can hardly remeber it myself :smack:
if you want a good text which deals in it, as well as the rest of the histoy of western music i recomended “A History of Western music” By Donal J. Grout and Claude V. Palisca

Excellent response time! So this is where the intellectual elite reside…

Any idea how to differenciate between chants from different periods? For example, was the 4 line notation specific to a certain time etc.? What do you look for when determining the time period of pieces?

Thanks!

Just had to point that out…

The earliest Western chants weren’t notated at all, and the earliest notation (only recently deciphered) took the form of little symbols written above the text. The notation went though several variations before settling on the modern 4-line staff and the standarized neumes. This is what all official Catholic chant books have been written in for the past several hundred years, so there’s no way to really tell what period chant it is from the notation alone.

It’s usually possible to tell what variety of chant it is from what the melody is, though if it’s from an “official” chant book it’s almost certainly Gregorian. Otherwise, it could be Sarum, Ambrosian, Old Roman, Mozarabic, Neo-Gallican, or a bunch of other little local variations.

There’s other more mundane things that can be used to arrive at a date - the type of paper, the ink used, etc. None are accurate, but together they can give a good indication.

These things would help if one were only trying to find the time period in which the particular score was written. Various chant traditions were handed down for centuries, though, so to tell from when or what variety of chant the actual music was, it would be necessary to look at the actual melodies.

True - but chances are, you’ll draw a blank. (On a related note, the ‘dates’ given for chants in the Liber Usualis have always amused me…there’s one that’s listed as something like “13th-16th century” :dubious: )

My wife is a music history professor at UCLA who specializes in the Middle Ages. Here’s what she has to add: