Editing Musical notation (section)

===Early Europe===
{{Main|Neume}}

[[File:Head of Christ1.jpg|thumb|Music notation from an early 14th-century English [[Missal]]]]
The scholar and music theorist [[Isidore of Seville]], while writing in the early 7th century, considered that "unless sounds are held by the memory of man, they perish, because they cannot be written down."{{sfnp|Isidore of Seville|2006|p=95}} By the middle of the 9th century, however, a form of neumatic notation began to develop in monasteries in Europe as a [[mnemonic]] device for [[Gregorian chant]], using symbols known as [[neume]]s; the earliest surviving musical notation of this type is in the ''Musica Disciplina'' of [[Aurelian of Réôme]], from about 850. There are scattered survivals from the [[Iberian Peninsula]] before this time, of a type of notation known as [[Neume|Visigothic neumes]], but its few surviving fragments have not yet been deciphered.{{sfnp|Zapke|2007|p={{Page needed|date=May 2010|reason=A complex issue, to be sure, but this book has 480 pages. Surely it does not take that long to demonstrate that nothing at all has been deciphered.}}}} The problem with this notation was that it only showed melodic contours and consequently the music could not be read by someone who did not know the music already.

[[File:EarlyMusicNotation.JPG|thumb|Early music notation]]

Notation had developed far enough to notate melody, but there was still no system for notating rhythm. A mid-13th-century treatise, ''[[De Mensurabili Musica]]'', explains a set of six [[rhythmic modes]] that were in use at the time,{{sfnp|Christensen|2002|p=628}} although it is not clear how they were formed. These rhythmic modes were all in triple time and rather limited rhythm in chant to six different repeating patterns. This was a flaw seen by German music theorist [[Franco of Cologne]] and summarised as part of his treatise ''Ars Cantus Mensurabilis'' (the art of measured chant, or [[mensural notation]]). He suggested that individual notes could have their own rhythms represented by the shape of the note. Not until the 14th century did something like the present system of fixed note lengths arise.{{citation needed|date=June 2017}} The use of regular measures (bars) became commonplace by the end of the 17th century.{{citation needed|date=June 2017}}

The founder of what is now considered the standard music staff was [[Guido of Arezzo|Guido d'Arezzo]],{{sfnp|Otten|1910}} an Italian Benedictine monk who lived from about 991 until after 1033. He taught the use of [[solmization]] syllables based on a hymn to [[Saint John the Baptist]], which begins [[Ut Queant Laxis]] and was written by the [[Lombards|Lombard]] historian [[Paul the Deacon]]. The first stanza is:

# '''Ut''' queant laxis
# '''re'''sonare fibris,
# '''Mi'''ra gestorum
# '''fa'''muli tuorum,
# '''Sol'''ve polluti
# '''la'''bii reatum,
# '''S'''ancte '''I'''ohannes.

Guido used the first syllable of each line, Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, and Si, to read notated music in terms of [[Guidonian hand#Hexachord in Middle Ages|hexachords]]; they were not note names, and each could, depending on context, be applied to any note. In the 17th century, Ut was changed in most countries except France to the easily singable, open syllable Do, believed to have been taken either from the name of the Italian theorist [[Giovanni Battista Doni|Giovanni Battista '''Do'''ni]], or from the Latin word '''''Do'''minus'', meaning ''Lord''.{{sfnp|McNaught|1893|p=43}}

Christian monks developed the first forms of modern European musical notation in order to standardize liturgy throughout the worldwide Church,{{sfnp|Hall|Neitz|Battani|2003|p=100}} and an enormous body of religious music has been composed for it through the ages. This led directly to the emergence and development of European classical music, and its many derivatives. The [[Baroque]] style, which encompassed music, art, and architecture, was particularly encouraged by the post-Reformation Catholic Church as such forms offered a means of religious expression that was stirring and emotional, intended to stimulate religious fervor.{{sfnp|Murray|1994|page=45}}