The Written Notation of Medieval Music （中世纪音乐的书面符号）.pdf

The Written Notation of Medieval Music Nigel Horne Introduction When visiting a collection of old music such as those held at the British Museum in London, I am often struck by the beauty and painstaking effort that went into producing these music manuscripts from what we loosely call the Middle Ages. I then realise that I cannot read the notation that was used; indeed, one often views these as works of art and pictorial beauty rather than as representations of the music being performed at the time. I chose this proj ect with the aim of teaching myself (and anyone reading it) how to read the notation of Western Music that was common in use before the notation of the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods and in most “modern” music. There are plenty of books available that cover early music, but often these books either use modern notation or assume prior knowledge of older notation. This proj ect is a collection of notes made from these books and presents a layman ’s guide to reading Medieval Music. Music notation evolved through the ages and different notations came and went in different places and at different times. I have selected the notation proposed by Franco of Cologne in his Ars Cantus Mensurabilis (The Art of Mensurable Music) written between 1250 and 1280. This notation became popular during the late 13th and 14th centuries, and is now more colloquially referred to as “square notation”. This notation is still in use today as plainsong notation in so-called Gregorian Chants; and was used in the Ars Nova technique of 14th century France, though Ars Nova notation included time signatures which the Franco notation did not. Consequently, this essay will also serve as a guide to reading modern plainsong. Clefs and Staves The most popular stave used had four lines; though three, five or six were also in use. Two types of clef existed, the F clef and the C clef, indica