Editing Staff (music) (section)

==History==
{{Multiple image
| direction         = vertical
| image1            = Beneventan music manuscript example.jpg
| caption1          = 12th-century Beneventan manuscript showing diastematic neumes and a single-line staff
| caption2          = Excerpt from a keyboard work by William Byrd written on a six-line staff, 1591
| total_width       = 260
| image2            = Byrd manuscript sample.jpg
}}
Early Western medieval notation was written with [[neume]]s, which did not specify exact pitches but only the shape of the melodies, i.e. indicating when the musical line went up or down; presumably these were intended as mnemonics for melodies which had been taught by rote.

During the 9th through 11th centuries a number of systems were developed to specify pitch more precisely, including '''diastematic neumes''' whose height on the page corresponded with their absolute pitch level (Longobardian and Beneventan manuscripts from Italy show this technique around the year 1000). '''Digraphic''' notation, using letter names similar to modern [[note (music)|note names]] in conjunction with the neumes, made a brief appearance in a few manuscripts, but a number of manuscripts used one or more horizontal lines to indicate particular pitches.

The treatise ''[[Musica enchiriadis]]'' ({{circa|900}}) uses [[Daseian]] notation for indicating specific pitches, but the modern use of staff lines is attributed to [[Guido d'Arezzo]] (990–1050), whose four-line staff is still used (though without the red and yellow coloring he recommended) in [[Liber usualis|Gregorian chant publications]] today. Five-line staves appeared in Italy in the 13th century and it was promoted by [[Ugolino da Forlì]]; staves with four, five, and six lines were used as late as 1600.<ref>Harvard Dictionary of Music (2nd edition, 1972): Neume, Staff</ref>