What music has brought to the world cannot be accounted for in words. There are different types of music and it is so prevalent in society today that it is used as a means of therapy and healing. Music has always had that kind of power on people. Millions listen and millions play all kinds of different instruments. It certainly brings people together.
The most popular instruments are the guitar and the piano. And just like there is an unaccountable number of languages to communicate, there are languages in the music world too. There is a proverb that has a touch of the philosophical to it. The spaces between the music notes are what make it beautiful. So to understand this, you have to understand that there is a beautiful language to music.
Invention Of Piano
The piano was first founded in the city of Greece in 220 BC by Bartolomeo Cristofori. It was in the third century that it started gaining some importance, but it wasn’t until the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that is was played at important functions in Greece and Rome . The piano back then looked nothing like the present piano, and the black and white keys were in fact reversed. Many modifications finally brought us to the piano that we know today. It became a sensation and a source of absolute pleasure to listeners. Tunes were played and knowledge spread to future generations.
Piano Sheet Music As Inscriptions On Clay Tablets
This led to the advent of piano sheet music. The need to pass on musical notes came even before there was parchment on which to pass it on to future generations. The individual notes of music are called ‘notation’, the earliest form of the piano scriptwriting seen inscribed on stones or clay tables with burnt marks. It was found in 2000 BC in what is present-day Iraq. Although, if the inscription is a notation or not is still controversial.
The notations were found in different fragments and putting them together gave us a vague idea as to what they meant. Ancient Greek music was found in these manuscripts. The musical notations were determined to be notations using a simple method. The strings of each of the keys in the piano have a different name represented by a different symbol. The names of the strings are put together and that forms a beautiful musical note when played.
Inscriptions On Paper
After being burnt on stones and parchment, we later had the method of writing the notations or notes by hand. These notes were inscribed on parchment papers where they could be turned over to find different kinds of notes. The notes that were written during the medieval times were all monophonic, meaning they had only one kind of musical instrument that could be played, or if we consider in terms of a singer, then a single singer sings the song. The evolution of monophony is polyphony, where two or more kinds of song melodies are combined to produce one tune. It is the working of different kind’s rhythms and melodies together that gives rise to a polyphonic tune. The different intricacies of the music were written on either side of the parchment paper.
The Tedious Task Of Replication By Hand
The language of piano sheet music is quite complicated. Each notation has a different kind of structure and shape. The task of having to copy these structures onto another piece of parchment in order to spread a melody or tune was an extremely tedious task that consumed hours of undivided attention. Even a small mistake would make a lot of difference. These tiny errors were called transcriptional errors.
Due to the complexity that went into reproducing the written script of musical notes, music writing became an art. It initially started off being done by monks and priests in order to safeguard the sacred hymns that were considered holy for that religion. These manuscripts that consisted of the hand-written music were expensive and could be possessed only by wealthy laurels. Some of the examples include the Gutenberg Bible and the Chantilly Codex.
Replication By Print
This led to people trying to get the lyrics printed as printing technology evolved in the fourteenth century. Printing the musical notes of the piano was still a time-consuming activity. When the printing of the notes was done on a sheet, it was supposed to pass through a large printing machine about three times with very carefully detailed alignment.
There are three different things that need to be pressed onto the printing paper; one is the staff lines, the words, and the notes. By the sixteenth century, Petrucci was able to print a twenty-year script of a monopoly tune in a single sitting. Ottaviano Petrucci is known for this very reason as the father of modern music printing. After this, printing music became a rather convenient job with his collection of the 96 Polyphonic compositions called Harmonice Music’s Odhecaton.
After this time-consuming method of printing music came about, the more cost-effective method was what Rastell from England came up with – a device that could print all three compositions of the music in a single setting. Although it had one problem: the lines consisting of the staff, words, and notes were not often properly aligned. A little bit of improvisation and modification on this was made, and now music is available to be printed in the form of piano sheet music.
Printing was much effective in comparison to hand-written music because the printing started consuming less time and was able to be done at a lower cost. Due to these reasons, musical manuscripts started being spread throughout different parts. There was a healthy exchange of music between countries. Piano sheet music was just not limited to the upper wealthy class of artists but also became available to the layman who wanted to learn music composition. Although, in some places piano sheet music was distributed only by the noblemen of churches and monarchs, making it an honorable gesture for anyone who received it. This also led to the teaching of piano lessons from piano sheet music by learned men to amateur enthusiasts.
Simpler Technology
A more advanced and simpler technology that developed for large scale printing is metal plate printing. The notes were embossed on metal plates, ink applied to the surface and pressed on paper to paper. This was faster, more effective and error-free. This made piano sheet music more available to the common man during the sixteenth century. After this, printing piano sheet music gained complexity alongside the technology to print the music.
As it became cheaper and convenient, a lot of piano sheet music printers developed across different parts of the world by the nineteenth century. Copyright rules were supposed to be made more stringent and after that, there was the peaceful expansion of piano sheet music through to today. Now, music is printed through the computer and with interest, and it is gaining momentum like never before. All thanks to the beautiful evolution of music printing machines from such complexity to such simplicity that today we are able to avail piano sheet music at our convenience.
Conclusion
So here we have covered the important information about piano sheet history. If you have any information to add, please let us know.
