The broad ax., 1920-05-08
ORIGIN OF THE MODERN MUSIC
STAFF.

Music 10 ~ old - creation itself and
we might 90 even farther and say that
IL Is As old a. Divinity and hence with
ont beginning.
We can have no very definite idea
Of the time when music began, for ever
since the creation, humanity has been
striving in some way 10 exPrrss its
feelings, sentiments, TO picture episodes
and events both great and small through
the medium Of music. Music has al
ways been and always will remain.
Vocal music is the oldest and when
man realized that he could not give
sufficient vent to his emotions vOcally,
he east about him for other means of
expression and ~ began TO fashion in
struments Of various kinds ~ a sup
plement to the wonderful organ given
him by his Creator-the voice.
In the early or dark days. tunes
were handed down from father TO son
or from one generation to the other
verbally, there being no means or sys
tenn of notation whereby a person who
had not previously learned a tune
might lean it from the printed pages
as we do now.
As time passed and the church at
Rome became united under Constan
tine, there arose a desire to preserve to
posterity the beautiful melodies then in
Use and 10 men began to work out
some plan or system of musical nota-
tion.
The earliest attempts at notation re-
suited in a system "neumes'
or musical shorthand consisting
of dots, dashes or compound
marks placed over or under a syllable
to indicate the rising and falling of the
voice.
These signs representing tone served
as an aid to the memory rather than
a definite representation of sound. The
exact date of their origin is not quite
clear, but they are attributed to the
eighth century. BY the tenth century
they had begun to have a relative
height and position to represent pitch.
and soon there followed the use Of
lines and clefs out of which developed
the modern pusie staff.
The musical staff "a we now have it
began with OpSs tsd line (abOut 9OO)
to indicate the pitch of one tone and
all signs placed directly on this line
were understood to represent (. while
those Immediately above and below
represented and 6 respectively. Later
a yellow line was added signifying c.
the pitches of d and b being desig-
mated by their relative positions to C.
Then two black lines were added, one
above the yellow and one between the
red and yellow to indicate = and e,
thus giving US four lined staff.
To Amanda Hucbaldus (s+O.q3O) is
given the credit Of having first used
parallel lines to indicate the rise and
fall Of tones. although some attribute
this to Pope Gregory and still others
the Boethius.
When at a later period and g were
placed on their respective lines. the
use Of the red and yellow lines was dis
continued.
A fifth line was added to the staff
during the time of Guido d'Arrezzo
(99O-l05O) who did much to simplify ,
notation. For a time the num- ,
Der of lines on the staff increased and :
varied 80 that there were a. many
Is eleven lines in the staff. but so many
ines retarded the facility of note {
eading and 50 eventually the middle 6
inc was erased, thus dividing the great 4
taft into two smaller ones of FIVE lines
ach.
II might be of interest to students =
f music to note that the eIef signs s.
ow in use are n corruption of the let r
ers c, F. G, and that in the early n
istory of musical notation, in plain
ong all written notes were of the same
ength but in the twelfth century they pt
'ere given different forms to indi- m
ate difference in their time value. m
st
upiIs of Miss Ronds Soorez a succsss bi