Система средневековой музыкальной нотации: Неймы и их развитие.

System of medieval musical notation

A neume (/nj//uː//m/; sometimes spelled neum) is the basic element of Western and Eastern systems of musical notation prior to the invention of five line staff notation. The earliest neumes were inflective marks that indicated the general shape but not necessarily the exact notes or rhythms to be sung. Later developments included the use of heightened neumes that showed the relative pitches between neumes, and the creation of a four line musical staff that identified particular pitches. Neumes do not generally indicate rhythm, but additional symbols were sometimes juxtaposed with neumes to indicate changes in articulation, duration, or tempo. Neumatic notation was later used in medieval music to indicate certain patterns of rhythm called rhythmic modes, and eventually evolved into modern musical notation. Neumatic notation remains standard in modern editions of plainchant.

The word neume entered the English language in the Middle English forms newme, nevme, neme in the 15th century, from the Middle French neume, in turn from either medieval Latin pneuma or neuma, the former either from ancient Greek πνεῦμα pneuma ('breath') or νεῦμα neuma ("sign"), or else directly from Greek as a corruption or an adaptation of the former.

Although chant was probably sung since the earliest days of the church, for centuries it was transmitted only orally. The earliest known systems involving neumes are of Aramaic origin and were used to notate inflections in the quasi emmelic (melodic) recitation of the Christian holy scriptures. As such they resemble functionally a similar system used for the notation of recitation of the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam. This early system was called ekphonetic notation, from the Greek ἐκφώνησις ekphonesis meaning quasi melodic recitation of text. Around the 9th century neumes began to become shorthand mnemonic aids for the proper melodic recitation of chant. A prevalent view is that neumatic notation was first developed in the Eastern Roman Empire. This seems plausible given the well documented peak of musical composition and cultural activity in major cities of the empire (now regions of southern Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Israel) at that time. The corpus of extant Byzantine music in manuscript and printed form is far larger than that of the Gregorian chant, due in part to the fact that neumes fell into disuse in the west after the rise of modern staff notation and with it the new techniques of polyphonic music, while the Eastern tradition of Greek orthodox church music and the reformed neume notation remains alive today. Slavic neume notations ("Znamenny Chant") are on the whole even more difficult to decipher and transcribe than Byzantine or Gregorian neume notations.

Various manuscripts and printed editions of Gregorian chant, using varying styles of square note neumes, circulated throughout the Catholic Church for centuries. Some editions added rhythmic patterns, or meter, to the chants. In the 19th century the monks of the Benedictine abbey of Solesmes, particularly Dom Joseph Pothier (1835–1923) and Dom André Mocquereau (1849–1930) collected facsimiles of the earliest manuscripts and published them in a series of 12 publications called Paléographie musicale (French article). They also assembled definitive versions of many of the chants, and developed a standardized form of the square note notation that was adopted by the Catholic Church and is still in use in publications such as the Liber Usualis (although there are also published editions of this book in modern notation). As a general rule, the notes of a single neume are never sung to more than one syllable; all three pitches of a three note neume, for example, must all be sung on the same syllable. (This is not universally accepted; Richard Crocker has argued that in the special case of the early Aquitanian polyphony of the St. Martial school, neumes must have been "broken" between syllables to facilitate the coordination of parts.) However, a single syllable may be sung to so many notes that several neumes in succession are used to notate it. The single note neumes indicate that only a single note corresponds to that syllable. Chants that primarily use single note neumes are called syllabic; chants with typically one multi note neume per syllable are called neumatic, and those with many neumes per syllable are called melismatic.

The Solesmes monks also determined, based on their research, performance practice for Gregorian chant. Because of the ambiguity of medieval musical notation, the question of rhythm in Gregorian chant is contested by scholars. Some neumes, such as the pressus, do indicate the lengthening of notes. Common modern practice, following the Solesmes interpretation, is to perform Gregorian chant with no beat or regular metric accent, in which time is free, allowing the text to determine the accent and the melodic contour to determine phrasing. By the 13th century, with the widespread use of square notation, it is believed that most chant was sung with each note getting approximately an equal value, although Jerome of Moravia cites exceptions in which certain notes, such as the final notes of a chant, are lengthened. The Solesmes school, represented by Dom Pothier and Dom Mocquereau, supports a rhythm of equal values per note, allowing for lengthening and shortening of note values for musical purposes. A second school of thought, including Wagner, Jammers, and Lipphardt, supports different rhythmic realizations of chant by imposing musical meter on the chant in various ways. Musicologist Gustave Reese said that the second group, called mensuralists, "have an impressive amount of historical evidence on their side" (Music in the Middle Ages, p. 146), but the equal note Solesmes interpretation has permeated the musical world, apparently due to its ease of learning and resonance with modern musical taste.

Examples of neumes may be seen here: "Basic & Liquescent Aquitanian Neumes" (archive from 10 June 2006, accessed 12 September 2014), , .

Neumes were used for notating other kinds of melody than plainchant, including troubadour and trouvère melodies, monophonic versus and conductus, and the individual lines of polyphonic songs. In some traditions, such as the Notre Dame school of polyphony, certain patterns of neumes were used to represent particular rhythmic patterns called rhythmic modes.

Ekphonetic neumes annotating the melodic recitation of (Christian) holy scriptures. Neumes of Byzantine music – in several stages, old Byzantine, middle Byzantine, late Byzantine and post Byzantine, and neo Byzantine (reformed). Neumes of Slavic chant (Slavic neumes or "Znamenny Chant"). Mozarabic or Hispanic neumes (Spain), also called Visigothic script. These neumes have not been deciphered, but the Mozarabic liturgy varies somewhat from the Roman rite. Catalan notation. Daseian notation – an early form of Western music notation used in 9th and 10th century music theory treatises. Buddhist chant uses a type of neume.

Because notation software usually focuses on modern European music notation, software that allows the user to use neumes is rare. Gregorio is a software especially written for that purpose. With its own GABC Syntax and together with LuaTeX it provides high quality output of square notation neumes and also St. Gall neumes. Finale can be enhanced with Medieval 2, a third party package devoted to early music and especially neumes. Lilypond is able to produce output using neumes. Some open fonts for neumes are available, which can be used by common office software or scorewriters.