Seminars in Medieval and Renaissance Music: From Lyre to Staff – Relating Diagrams, Neumes and Diastematic Notation
Konstantin Voigt (University of Freiburg)
Discussants: Charles Atkinson and Susan Rankin
Guidonian diastematic notation derived ultimately from a fusion of neumes, stemming from grammatical accents, with the line-diagram of the tone-system found in Boethius. This paper limns the history of neumatic notation as reception of grammar and the history of the line diagram as reception of ars musica, examining the "operative potential" (Sybille Krämer) of both types of visualization. The study shows that the operativity of both diagrams and neumes changed drastically between the ninth and the eleventh centuries. Whereas the Boethian diagram lacked any reference to melodic motion, ninth-century adaptations of it relate it to the melodies of Roman chant, temporalizing it and changing its orientation - a process resulting from the spatial orientation of neumes. Neither medium was intended primarily for "storing" melodic material. Instead, both relied heavily on the melodic knowledge of their users. This recall-based operativity of both ninth-century diagrams and neumes is substantially different from the operativity of Guidonian notation, devised as a means of storage to enable musical practice from the book and resting firmly on the mathematic/aural foundation of the monochord. Indeed, the monochord as the basis for this new operativity meant less a development of notational means than a conceptual restart in the history of notation.