By composer and critic Felix Borowski
It is at once a fascinating and a difficult investigation which has for its raison d'etre the discovery of musical discoverers. Such an investigation must be fascinating because there is a certain piquant satisfaction in tracing the origin of things to the source from which they have spring; it is difficult because in so many cases - nearly in all - the existance of numberless affairs of art has been the result of evolutionary processes rather than the offshoot of a sudden and an unexpected stronke of inventive inspriation on the part of some gifted men (or women). The difficulty is added to in certain cases by the nebulous condition of musical chronicles in earlier periods of time.
Inventions which were of material assistance to the progress of what may be called modern music could not come into being until someon discovered a method of expressing musical ideas in writing - the invention of musical notation, in a word. This invention had, first of all, to consist of a staff which would permit the pitch of sounds to be designated, and secondly of a method of indicationg the duration of notes. Now a primitive species of notation had been employed by the ancient Greeks and Romans, and in the eighth century a species of stenographic notation - it is known to us as the "Neume" system - was in general use. But there was not staff and therefore no precise method of fixing the pitch of notes.
The Invention of The Staff
The first great invention arrived, therefore, with the discovery of the staff. This came about with the employment of one line, the pitch of whihc was supposed to represent the note "F;" but no one knows who was the musician to whom it first occurred to fix the exact pitch of the "Neumes" placed upon this line. Probably it was some humble but ingenious monk - for after all, it was the monasteries that, in the earlier days of art, accomplished the most for music and painting and sculpture.
The staff was then, however, in a merely rudimentary state. We arrive at the invention of one such as is known to us today; and this brings forward the name of Guido of Arezzo. This Benedictine monk, who was born about 995 at Arezzo, in Tuscany, was undoubtedly the inventor of the four line staff; whether he was also the inventor of some other things - solmization and the clefs for instance - is less certain. The discovery of giving time and rhythm to music came later; nor is it possible to say who was the first to invent notes of different value, or who invented the signs which we call "rest." Bar line did nto come into existence until about four hundred years ago.
The First Printed Music
The gratitude of music lovers should go out to the man who first made printed music possible. Now the art of printing music followed very shortly the invention of printing books. The first to print music of any kind from type was Ulrich Hahn, a Roman printer who brought out a Roman missal with notes in 1476. His work was quickly taken up by other printers. Our modern system of printing sheet music froum engraved copper plates was invented by Simone Verivio, of Rome, who published by this method his collection of Canzonettes entitled Diletto Spirituale in 1586. But music typography has, to be sure, undergone remarkable changes and improvements since that time.
By the time the sixteenth century had well started, the rapid dissemination of printed music led to the not less rapid development of different forms in the art itself.
But the century had grown old before any important inventions bearing upon modern music came into existence. It was the rise of instrumental art which was responsible for many of the inventions which, primitive enough four hundred years ago, have since grown into wonderful and complicated forms of art; but in the sixteenth century instrumental music as a separate and independent branch was in its infancy, and it was the handmaid of vocal art. Yet neither the opera nor the oratorio could here come into existence without it.
