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By the middle of the third century BC, at latest, an agreed system of musical notation was in use among professionals. It is employed consistently in the surviving papyri and inscriptions, which extend from that time down to the late third century AD, and also in tables and examples in several of the later writers.1 It is still to be seen in the medieval tradition of Mesomedes' songs, though its use by practising musicians probably ceased around the fourth or fifth century. Our understanding of the system is derived principally from Alypius' extensive tables of the notes available in each of the fifteen keys and in each genus. |
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The pitches of notes are indicated by letter symbols, which in the case of vocal music are written above the syllables of the text. In documents of Hellenistic date, when successive syllables are to be sung on the same note, the symbol stands only over the first, but in later texts it is repeated over each syllable.2 There are two separate series of symbols, one normally used for vocal, the other for instrumental music.3 Rhythmical values are defined where necessary by certain supplementary signs; but in vocal texts the rhythms are for the most part left to be inferred from the metre of the verse. There |
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1 Alypius pp. 368-406 J., Aristid. Quint. pp. 19-20, 24-7, Gaud. pp. 347-55, Bacchius pp. 293-302, Anon. Bellerm. 1-11, 67-8, 77-104, Mart. Cap. 9.943, Boeth. Inst. Mus. 4.3f., 15f. |
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2 In a few papyri we find a horizontal bar appearing here and there among the notes. It may perhaps represent an alternative way of marking a repeat of the preceding note. |
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3 This is stated by Aristid. Quint. p. 23.20-2, cf. Alyp. p. 367.22, Gaud. p. 350. 10, Anon. Bellerm. 67, 68; and the distinction is nearly always maintained in the musical documents. The only exceptions are 13 Limenius' Paean, where the instrumental notation is used (we know that the composer was a professional citharist); 32 PMichigan 2958, where a sung text has vocal notation, but there is one line of notation without accompanying text, perhaps an instrumental insert; and 11 SEG 30. 390, where again vocal notation seems to be used for a short instrumental interpolation in a sung text. |
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