A special music performance was held in Montpellier, a city in the south of France. Eighteen birds played a wonderful movement on a Gibson electric guitar.
With the piano entering more and more families, the staff has changed from "familiar face" to "explosive red" among the general public. Because in piano teaching, the notation of staff is widely used all over the world, and only the staff can fully express the music score.
Notation is to music what words are to language.
The earliest information of human music can only be preserved from generation to generation through oral instruction. Before the modern high-tech sound carrier appeared, there was only one notation for recording and storing music. At present, the most well-known staff faithfully "writes" the composer’s creative intentions and achievements, which can be called a spectacle created by human music civilization and a microcosm of the emergence and development of music language.
1. The music recorded on plants opens the notation.
The earliest origin of staff can be traced back to ancient Greece. Music occupies a very important position in the field of knowledge in ancient Greece. The ancient Greeks used two notations, both of which used letters or similar letters as symbols. One was used to record the melody of vocal music, and the other was used to record the melody of instrumental music. Vocal music notation originated in Ionian at the end of the 5th century BC, and instrumental music notation may be earlier. It is said that the music written in the Vienna National Library on the plant products called Pa Pirus is the oldest music in the world, with a history of two thousand years.
Some studies also show that a city discovered in 1918, 100 miles southwest of Cairo — — In an ancient ruins in Oxilinkus, researchers found a written record of music — — A hymn fragment written on papyrus. In those days when music was usually spread by word of mouth, even the private remains scrawled on papyrus were extremely rare. This is also the only music record that survived in the first 400 years of Christianity. Above this hymn, the pitch and sound value are recorded by some alphabetic arrangement or simple auxiliary line symbols, which is also a typical feature of the earliest music score format. It has eight different notes, spanning an octave, these letters arranged in a straight line, each note corresponds to a scale, and the scale combination of long and short squares; The horizontal strokes and individual dots on the notes indicate which words should be emphasized when singing.
In addition, a scholar from the University of California, Berkeley, published an article in 1985, demonstrating that the earliest musical notation was found on the cuneiform tablets originating from the two river basins.
As the predecessor of staff notation — — Newham notation appeared in the 8th century AD. The word "Neum" comes from Greek, which means "symbol" and is a way to express music in the form of drawing. Since the 8th century, in order to prevent those uncommon hymns from being forgotten because of too long interval, monks who copied hymns added some symbols similar to language stress or punctuation at the top of the lyrics, indicating the up-and-down trend of hymns concisely. This symbol is called "Neum Spectrum".
In the early days, Newham notation was limited to indicating the direction of hymn tunes, and could not indicate the pitch position and note length. Later, someone creatively used a straight line to mark Newham spectrum to the top and bottom of this straight line, and defined this straight line as F, so the ancestor of staff appeared — — A line spectrum.
In the middle of the 9th century, a complete hymn melody copied with Newm symbols appeared. In the development of notation, some places began to arrange the upper and lower spatial distances between Neum symbols according to the size of intervals. Moreover, Newham notation indicating the pitch and interval structure of melody has gradually formed, and some symbols can indicate a single note or a group of notes, which helps people to record music melody completely. Later, this Newham spectrum gradually developed into two-line spectrum and three-line spectrum.
It took nearly four centuries to change from color to black and white.
Different from today’s black-and-white world, the staff was colorful in the process of reproduction.
In the 11th century, Guido D ‘Alezzo, a musician in arezzo, Italy, added Newham spectral lines to four lines, and specified the pitch as D, F, A and C, and the range was about eight degrees. Different pitches were expressed by clef or color, and the red line represented F sound, and the yellow line or green line represented C sound, which made the pitch more accurate. This kind of music score was called "four-line score", and they later became high notes in the staff. Since then, due to the need of playing, Newham’s spectrum has appeared six-line spectrum, seven-line spectrum and even eleven-line spectrum. To commemorate the invention and birth of the staff, people called Guido D ‘Alezo "the father of the staff".
Then, how does the staff come from "stepping on colorful auspicious clouds" return to the black and white world?
More and more composers are involved in the exploration of more accurate music notation. By the 13th century, the four-line score used all black lines, only a Latin letter was written at the front of the line to indicate the absolute pitch of this notation. This method gradually became popular in Europe at that time. But unfortunately, it still can’t show a clear rhythm. Especially the multi-part melody is becoming more and more complex, and people urgently need to find a way to accurately describe the length of each sound. At this time, a monk named Frank in Cologne, Germany, pioneered the different lengths of "black notes" in his book The Art of Theorem Songs. This notation, which strictly specifies the length of notes, rests and marks, is a supplement and enrichment to Newham’s spectrum and can be called a landmark improvement in the development of line spectrum.
In the 15th century, the trend of black notes receded, and the types of notes increased, and hollow notes appeared to represent the sound value, which is also commonly known as "white notes". With the development of line spectrum in this period, the position of pitch and the length of sound can be basically recorded, and the Fu Tou has also become a circle.
In order to change the situation that the spectral lines of musical scores are too many and complicated, European countries later unified Newham spectrum into five lines, and the notes that are too high or too low were expressed by adding lines, which made the recording of pitch more perfect. Since the 17th century, the staff developed on the basis of Newham’s spectrum and quantitative notation tends to be perfect, gradually finalized and has been used ever since.
After centuries of "tempering", the staff has gradually reached unprecedented accuracy. According to this, composers can mark the changes of volume, speed and timbre more carefully, which can be said to be "presented in detail"
When water is full, it overflows. Too precise music "language" was later considered by some people as a "double-edged sword". Although it can convey the composer’s creative intention in detail, it squeezes the space for the performer to improvise, which makes the musician shout "not enough". As a result, the direction of notation has changed again, and the final interpretation right of music has been returned to the performers. The performers no longer stick to "accurate presentation" but boldly release their individuality, which makes each performance unique.
At this point, music notation has gone through thousands of years of development, from being a summary of memos at first, to helping players repeat performances accurately, and then returning to the original point after a big circle.
3. The first "cross-border" album recording traditional Chinese opera comes from Mei Lanfang.
In the history of music development in China for thousands of years, there have been many ways of notation, such as subtractive notation, metrical notation, Lv Zi notation, etc. Up to now, except for Gongchi notation, there are a few old folk artists who are using it, and other notation methods are forgotten because they are too cumbersome.
Accompanied by drums, ancient people sat together, playing games and cheering for fun — — In this way, the embryonic form of early China’s music score was derived from entertainment. Drum music in the Book of Rites Throwing Pots is the oldest ancient music score in China, which appeared in the Zhou Dynasty and has a history of more than 3,000 years. There are some comma symbols in the score, which are arranged vertically in turn, as well as the words "drum", "semi-drum" and "Xue drum". Experts speculate that these are the terms related to performance, and professionals can also simulate the powerful beat from them.
In Guan Zi Di Yuan Pian written in the Spring and Autumn Period, a mathematical method for calculating the chord length ratio of each tone in pentatonic scale is recorded, which is called "three-point gain and loss method" in history, and the names of pentatonic scale "Gong, Shang, Jiao, Zheng and Yu" in China are completely described. As to where these five names came from, there are different opinions. Some say that they correspond to the stars, some say that they are derived from five animals, and some say that they are totems of ancient clans. All kinds of opinions paint a mysterious color on music and express the different musical concepts of China ancestors. Up to today, little is known about "Gong Shang Shu", but the five tones of "Gong Shang, Jiao, Zheng and Yu" are quite well-known. For example, in the theme song "Long Wen" of Happy Dictionary of CCTV, there is a lyric that "Gong Shang Jiao Zheng Yu, Qin Qi calligraphy and painting sing, peacocks fly southeast, and weaver girls will be cowherd &hellip. …” This song has been sung by stars many times, and it has also been on the Spring Festival Evening in 2010, which became a hit overnight.
Compared with the western staff and notation, China’s classical music score does not form the accurate quantification of pitch and rhythm and the transcoding of digital symbols, but only the outline record of the basic pitch and rhythm of traditional music or aria, which gives the performers and singers much more freedom and uncertainty in creation than the western music score, so it is also called "frame score".
The staff was introduced into China in the mid-17th century. There is a written record in Xieyun Duqu, a sequel to Lv Zheng Yi written by Emperor Kangxi in 1713, which published in detail the knowledge of western music theory such as staff, scales, roll names, etc. Although the staff at that time was only in its primary form and its symbols were very different from today’s, it was spread through this printed book.
The staff, which has just entered the country, is only used to record and spread the classic songs and hymns that praise God sung in the Catholic church. It was not until the end of the 19th century that it was gradually accepted and used by Chinese people. In 1930, Mei Lanfang’s operas were recorded by musician Liu Tianhua for the first time, and Mei Lanfang’s Songs was published, which is also the first "cross-border" album in China to record traditional opera music with staff.
4. The notation has been carried forward in China.
There are two kinds of musical notation: numbers and letters. The most common musical notation is numbers, and its embryonic form first appeared in Europe in the 16th century. At that time, a French Catholic priest named Suaiti wrote music songs with seven sounds, namely 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7, and compiled a pamphlet "New Methods of Learning plainsong and Music". In the mid-18th century, Rousseau, a famous French thinker who was famous for his book Confessions, also read the Proposal for New Musical Symbols to the Paris Academy of Sciences, and mentioned the "digital notation". Later, a group of social elites improved and popularized it, and finally formed the notation, which was also called "Galpa-Xie notation" in the west.
This notation was introduced to Japan in 1882. In 1903, Zeng Zhimao, one of the earliest music theorists in the history of modern music in China, published the article "The General Idea of Music Theory" in a chinese magazine published in Tokyo, introducing the knowledge of western music theory, and published six songs such as "Training" and "Spring outing" in the form of comparison between notation and staff, which is the earliest record of Chinese people using notation at present.
Shen Xingong, a modern music educator, was also one of the earliest disseminators of musical notation. His School Singing Collection was the first collection of musical notation written and published by China. Since then, notation has gradually spread to schools all over the country. In the 1930s, the mass singing movement of resisting Japan and saving the nation was widely carried out. At that time, famous pop songs, such as March of the Volunteers of Nie Er and The Yellow River Cantata of Xian Xinghai, were written by notation. With the widespread singing of these songs, notation gradually became popular among ordinary people in China.
The notation of musical notation is the closest to the popular Gong-Chi notation in China, and it is simpler and more accurate to record the height of notes by musical notation. Therefore, musical notation has developed rapidly in China, and some experts even think that China is the country that absorbs and uses musical notation the best and develops it the most in the world. Especially in the field of folk music, notation fits the characteristics of Chinese folk music, because notation records only the general framework of melody, and more needs face-to-face communication between teachers and students; On the playing method of musical instruments, Chinese folk music has many special expressive force symbols, and the use of notation is clear and clear. If staff is used, it will become complicated. These are the important reasons why notation is highly praised by Chinese folk music.
Of course, this is just a matter of habit. With the blending of modern Chinese and western cultures, more and more folk music also adopts the notation of line notation. In fact, in the field of folk music, there are still many places where staff can be used, and that is the ensemble moment. When all kinds of musical instruments play the same piece of music according to different parts, the powerful function of the staff is revealed, which is unmatched by the notation.
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No one can replace the staff or the simple staff.
Jacky Cheung, a Hong Kong singer who is known as the "God of Songs" in the Chinese music scene, once bluntly said that he did not know the staff, but only knew the simple music. Nowadays, at the scene of some music variety shows, some judges are repeatedly criticized by netizens because they can’t understand the staff. So, is the staff really more "advanced" than the notation?
Experts pointed out that in the history of music development, people have created various different notations according to their own needs, and different musical instruments, regions and traditional cultures may produce very different notations. Such as guqin, using guqin notation; Traditional Chinese opera uses the notation of gongs and drums. There is also the traditional notation of Gongchi notation in our country, but now there are the most familiar notation, staff notation and so on. We can’t simply say which notation is the best, but which method is relatively scientific. Through accurate notes and various dynamic symbols and emoticons, we can try our best to return the expression intention of the original composer.
Objectively speaking, staff notation and simple notation both play an important role in the field of Chinese music culture. They complement each other and have irreplaceable functions, but their users are different.
Notation is simple and clear. Even now, many popular music still uses notation. Compared with other notation, staff has irreplaceable advantages. It records the level of music by the position of the Fu Tou of the note on five parallel horizontal lines, and indicates the length of the note by the different shapes of the note, which can not only visually indicate the pitch of the musical sound, but also accommodate the music information in a large amount, especially in recording and writing large-scale ensemble music with wide range, numerous parts and frequent tone sandhi. Therefore, since the 18th century, the staff has become the main position of music notation, and it has been widely used in the field of professional music in the world today.
Nowadays, pianos have entered more and more families. In piano teaching, the notation of staff is widely used all over the world, and only the staff can fully express the music score. At the same time, the performance and singing of various music groups, the teaching of music colleges and the learning of piano children all played a very important role in the spread of staff.
Do you know
Can’t clap between concerts?
At the end of the year, many concerts were held together. Watching a concert is different from watching a movie. There are many unwritten rules, such as not applauding between the movements of a symphony, waiting for a complete track to enter the venue when you are late, and so on. Where did these rules come from that the enthusiastic audience couldn’t understand?
There was a controversy about whether there was applause between movements. Before the end of 19th century, clapping between movements was "not a thing". Mozart gets excited when he hears the applause of the audience when he plays. Once, in a letter to his father, he mentioned, "There is a passage in the middle of Allegro in the first movement, which I know the audience will like very much … … Sure enough, the audience were all in ecstasy and the applause was very warm. I expected this long ago. When I wrote this paragraph, I knew it would be very effective. At the end of the movement, this piece of music appeared again, and sure enough, the audience shouted again and asked to repeat it … …” Repeated applause made Mozart very happy. After the symphony, he even went to the Royal Garden to buy ice cream to reward himself.
Until the end of 19th century, there were professional cheering people in European opera houses. The function of these "masters" was to cheer in some boring opera performances. Perhaps this move is not flattering. From the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century, most audiences accepted the etiquette agreement of not clapping between movements. Moreover, it has been recognized by some composers. For example, in Mourning for the Dead, Mahler even pointed out that there should be no applause in the middle of the movement.
In addition, there is an important etiquette for listening to the concert, that is, you can’t be late. If you are late for some reason, you must wait for the guidance of the theater staff and wait for a complete track (not a movement) before you can enter. In fact, being late was not condemned as early as the mid-19th century, because early concerts belonged to small gatherings in aristocratic circles, and being late and leaving early was commonplace. By the end of the 19th century, after Mahler was in charge of vienna state opera, he resolutely implemented the rule that late spectators were not allowed to enter the venue, even if the royal family members were late, which became a etiquette until now.
There is such a saying
The New Year concert originated from the old Strauss.
The New Year is a common festival for people all over the world. There are many ways for people to celebrate the New Year, but holding a high-level concert is a program in major cities all over the world, welcoming the beginning of the new year with relaxed and wonderful music.
The tradition of holding concerts in the New Year originated in Vienna. On December 31st, 1847, Johann Strauss I, the founder of the Strauss music family, held an open-air concert in the suburb of Vienna. The repertoire included symphonies, waltzes and polkas, which were warmly welcomed by the audience, so that the concert didn’t end until dawn the next day. This is the origin of the Vienna New Year Concert.
Today, the annual New Year Concert held in Vienna Golden Hall is still the most eye-catching annual music event in the world. Most TV stations and radio stations around the world broadcast live, with tens of millions of listeners. Inspired by this tradition, many countries or cities in the world have also held New Year concerts to celebrate the arrival of the New Year.
the whole wide world
Austrian composer’s manuscript sells at sky-high price
The original manuscript of the score of Austrian composer gustav mahler’s Second Symphony was sold for 4.5 million pounds at an auction held in London, England recently. The 232-page score set a new record for the auction of the score.
The music seller is the family of Gilbert Kaplan, an American economist and businessman who died two years ago. There is an amazing story behind the score. According to the Daily Mail, Kaplan was fascinated by this symphony, also known as Resurrection, after listening to it at Carnegie Hall in new york in 1965. Never having studied conducting, he is determined to conduct the best orchestra in the world to perform this piece of music one day and put his determination into action.
Kaplan once described the feeling of listening to Resurrection as follows: "When I entered the concert hall, I was alone, but when I came out, I felt like I was struck by lightning." In the next 17 years, Kaplan traveled all over the world to listen to the performance of this symphony, and discussed his experience with professionals including conductors whenever he had the opportunity. In 1982, he finally stepped onto the stage of Lincoln Center in new york and realized his wish under the witness of many celebrities.
Photo courtesy of this edition/vision china