A Brief History of Written Music

Long before there were written words, stories were passed down from generation to generation. This was the way events and folk tales were remembered.

The process of remembering music wasn't much different than the way stories were memorized. Imagine a time when music wasn't written...after all, how do you describe a tune floating on the wind? Tunes were memorized and then taught to younger members of a family so they survived from generation to generation. Unfortunately, this method wasn't extremely reliable. Small alterations were made to music because a performer might think it sounded better, it was easier to play, or they just had a lapse in memory.

A method of writing music was developed in the 1400's and it's not that much different from what we use today. Musical notes called "neumes" were used to indicate the pitch and length of a tone. This system has been revised over the years to the point where we are able to listen to performances of Mozart's symphonies or Beethoven's sonatas and know that they closely resemble what the composers wrote many centuries ago because they are performed from written music.