Written Music Essay -- Music History

Written MusicFor a very long time harmony was not written down. It was sung or cont oddment from memory. As it was passed on from person to person, many changes crept into the tunes. A way of writing music down was needed so that it would be sung or contend exactly as it had been composed. The name for written music that man developed is notation. The system of musical notation generally used today is the result of centuries of development- from just about the end of the ninth century to the early 1700s. This development began in the cathedrals in monasteries of the Roman Catholic Church. Since many of the Churchs services were sung, they were sung from memory. Towards the end of the ninth century dots and dashes and squiggles were written over the words in the church books. These signs, called neumes, showed the direction in which the melody should go. But they were still very vague. About 900 A.D. the music was made a little easier to read. The neumes were written at certain di stances above or below the horizontal red line, representing the note F, to show how high or low...