11/10/13- More On Musical Notation

Some of the earliest forms of musical notation that were discovered in the form of cunieform tablets, and were found in Nippur, Sumer, which is now Iraq, and had been created about 2000 years Before Christ. They seem to use a diatonic scale, using tones that go up in thirds, although the musical language itself used in early examples like Mesopotamian songs are quite fragmented. Many of these tablets found are related to the tuning of a harp like instrument called a lyre, which was frequently used whenever accompanying Babylonian hymns. The lyre itself has become something of an icon in itself over the years, featured in artworks to symbolise gods and wisdom. 

An example of Sumerian cunieform music from 26thc BC,
it is a lexical list of harp strings and
one of the oldest existing examples of written music

The musical markings themselves are nothing like the universal modern day staff notation method, in that today's musical notation can be seen as it's own language, that has to be learned to be understood and conveys instructions to create sound almost exclusively through symbols, while the cunieform markings serve more as indications for the reader to interoperate, written over or under the words of the hymns. 

There have been countless excavations and discoveries of ancient musical writings all over the world, including a collection of Hurrian Songs dating from about 1400 BC, which were discovered in the city Ugarit and use Akkadin musical instructions, which is a now extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. Ancient Greek papyri writings have also been discovered, which seem to follow a very similar system to the Babylonian texts.

Of course, before the modern staff notation that the majority of musicians use worldwide today, musical notation differed between countries, due to different languages, instruments and culture, and a lot of music was not even written down, and was instead passed down from generation to generation through oral communication.

"Introit Gaudeamus omnus", an example of Gregorian Chant Music, 14th-15th Century
The earliest forms of Gregorian chants used indication symbols called neumes, before
the notation method progressed on to use square notation (shown above),
 a kind of staff notationsimilar to what we use today.

An example of Byzantine church music from Serbia, 18th Century.
A staffless notation method which uses indication marks to show change in pitch, kind of like
musical punctuation.

Modern Day Staff Notation
It is read from left to right and each horizontal line marks a whole tone
while the horizontal "bar" lines give a musical piece structure.
The notes themselves vary in appearance depending
on their length.

It seems that due to the invisible nature of music, the symbols developed to communicate musical instruction are not pictorial but rather mathematical, using certain lines to indicate change in tone and duration of notes. I think the wonderful thing about music is that it seems to bridge the gaps between science and art- by using a logical and mathematical language we are able to share and express ourselves through pure sound.  With the different variations all over the world and the progression of symbol development, believe that music is a language in itself.