"A newly identified 9th-century manuscript leaf may contain some of the earliest known examples of written music in Western Europe - what experts are calling a rare witness to the very dawn of musical notation. The manuscript leaf is being offered on the public market for $80,000 US. The discovery was made by Nathan Raab, president of The Raab Collection."
"During this time, monks began adapting Byzantine ekphonetic notation and other accents into a system of penstrokes and dots called neumes, which guided singers by showing the general rise and fall of pitch. As Raab notes, the now-familiar musical stave came much later: "The musical stave establishing pitch was not invented until the 11th century, and then with only four lines, with full notation in polyphonic five-line staves only following in the second half of the 15th century.""
A vellum leaf dated to the mid to late 800s bears penstrokes and dots above the word "[A]lleluja" indicating early musical notation. Nathan Raab of The Raab Collection identified the marks on a liturgical Mass book leaf and spent months researching their musical character. The notations appear to be neumes adapted from Byzantine ekphonetic accents and guide singers by indicating general rise and fall of pitch. The musical stave for precise pitch arrived centuries later in the 11th century with four lines, while full polyphonic five-line staves emerged in the second half of the 15th century. The leaf joins other early notational examples such as the Laon Gradual and the St. Gall Cantatorium.
Read at Medievalists.net
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