Musical Notes

Though the notion of music notes may seem like an integral, necessary part of any system for creating and performing music, it is less intuitive than the casual, non musically inclined listener might suppose, being more a part of the history of how the modern world has quantified and systematized various aspects of native human culture than an implied part of the basic existence of music. The method through which musical notes are arrived at, represented and accessed by musicians can vary widely between different regions, and the way in which they came to take their present-day form is one that took a considerable portion of time to unfold. A survey of the development of human artistic and intellectual culture throughout history will necessarily include some coverage of the ways in which music notes have been created as ideal systems and as part of the practical process of playing music.

The earliest forms of musical notes have been considered by musical history scholars to exist in the form of a cuneiform tablet found by an archeological team in Iraq that is felt to date from 2000 B.C.E. It is far more rudimentary and less indicative of degrees of sophistication than today’s systems for representing music notes but nonetheless holds considerable historical significance for its place in time, as does a more sophisticated system found recorded on tablets that are estimated by archeological experts to date from about 1250 B.C.E., which contain the earliest known melodies that have found to be recorded. Much later in history, during the era of the ancient Greeks, a system of musical notes was in place that has been found by contemporary musical scholars to be enabled for the representation of pitch and note duration, and to a lesser degree harmony. Despite its limitations for the representation of music notes in comparison to modern systems of musical notes, this system had much staying power and remained in place in some form in Greek culture until the fourth century C.E., around the time that the Roman Empire, which had dominated Greece for much of that time, was falling into a steady decline.

The next great source of creativity in the task of formulating systems of notations for creating understandable charts of music notes can be found in the Arab World toward the end of the first millennium C.E., when that culture was in a position of great political power that was matched by its intellectual vitality. One of the most important figures in the Arab World’s movement toward an organized system of musical notes was the intellectual Al-Kindi, who moved practice beyond the Greek system in its expressive powers and complexity of organization, while his successor in that task Al-Farabi devised a “pure tone” system that is still widely relied upon as a source of music notes in the Arab World’s music. The next great source for innovation in the creation of systems of notation for making and interpreting musical notes came from the medieval European monasteries.

Sheet Music

Though popular music has always been a component of human culture, the rise of a commercial, large-scale and hugely profitable industry that specializes in bringing songs to a general public is a relatively recent development tied to such trends as the development of commercially available recording technology. Before that was achieved, however, the essential key to the music industry’s creation lay in the rise of literacy and availability of leisure time to the bourgeois middle class of the 19th century, which passed its time partly through the means of commercially available sheet music by which songs could be codified, rather than being gradually disseminated through oral folk culture in varying forms, soon after they were composed. Music sheets became particularly attractive for ownership after the rise of the piano as an essential feature of middle-class life, commonly displayed during social visits and parties as a way of indicating social status. The beginnings of a true industry based on the distribution of sheet music began in the United States in the late 19th century, in a business centered on New York City that came to be known as Tin Pan Alley.

The early ability of artists and business people to offer music sheets on a commercially viable basis was held down by the weak copyright protections in place, which did little to prevent sheet music once released onto the market from being reproduced without consequence. Toward the end of the century, stronger protections for copyrights enabled music sheets to be looked to by musical professionals as a means for a living. Though companies involved in publishing sheet music sprang up throughout the country in various regional centers, the largest companies were set up in New York City, which came to be regarded as the center of the industry. The area in which these companies were located, and then the industry as a whole, came to be known as Tin Pan Alley, a place originally identified as being located on West 28th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenue, with the term later being applied to the neighborhoods known for sheet music publishers and musical instrument vendors in other cities and countries, as for instance on England’s Denmark Street. It is generally believed to refer to the cacophony of many different pianos being played at once, but the actual derivation has not been satisfactorily established by music industry historians.
The use of music sheets began to fade in the early 20th century, as first the phonograph and later the developments in radio technology established recordings as the main means by which people gained access to popular music. The record industry thus supplanted firms based on publishing music sheets for popular songs as the primary mover in the popular music industry. Tin Pan Alley continued as a major force in American popular music after this change in delivery mechanisms for song compositions, continuing in some form or another until the rock & roll explosion beginning in the 1950s and achieved in the 1960s reoriented popular music.