Medieval sheet music with 'neumes' now on display for the public to see in London

Centuries before recorded music, sheet music and streaming services, there were "little squiggles" on pieces of parchment to guide a singer or choir.

Known as medieval neumes, the squiggles didn't indicate the tune or the song's key, but instead outlined pacing, and whether to perform the notes fast, slow, smooth or choppy.

Now, researchers in London, Ont. and the public have access to this early form of written music through Western University's archives library. It recently acquired two pieces of parchment containing Germanic neumes likely drawn in the 1200s.

"The notation here kind of looks like chicken scratch," Western music professor Kate Helsen explains. "Essentially what you're doing is reminding a singer who already knows what they are singing in a mass or church how to sing what they're singing."

The two pieces in Western's collection had been recycled into a book binding or cover at some point in time, a common practice known as manuscript "waste". When Western's rare book librarian Deborah Meert-Williston came across them in an online sale just outside Toronto, she connected with Helsen.

"I just said, 'Is this what I think it is?'" said Meert-Williston, adding that once Helsen confirmed, the two worked with colleagues to find funding to purchase them for the university's collection.

The medieval neumes have medium-sized text of chants with tiny markings above each word, only meant to show how the word or syllable should be performed.

"It's a big mystery [how the music sounds] because, of course, we don't have the individual pitches when we look at this kind of notation," Helsen said.

However, she can sometimes figure out the melody by matching the text in the medieval neumes to chants that appear later in written music. Assuming they are the same chants, Helsen said she's created a recording where the proper melody is sung with the medieval performance cues.

LISTEN: How medieval neumes can help decipher what 9th century chants sounded like

There was a natural development between medieval neumes and sheet music as it is known today, Helsen said.

But before either, people relied on their memory to recall chants, she said, but there remained a desire to preserve and share the music.

"What happens when you're relying more and more on memory aids, you don't have everything in your head so now you're going to need more and more information," Helsen said.

In 1025, music theorist Guido of Arezzo put a horizontal line across the page representing a specific pitch, Helsen said, then distributed the neumes above or below it. That eventually evolved into today's sheet music, which has a staff with five lines and notes to show different pitches and rhythms.

Helsen said having the neumes in the university's possession makes her music history classes more interactive.

"You talk to students about this kind of notation, how it develops into the musical staff and how we get our music today, and it can sound really theoretical and far away," she said. "All of those questions go away when you get to hand something like this to a student…They never forget that."

"I think it's important for students to understand that we didn't make that stuff up," said Helsen. "It's not like modern times are the only times that music has ever been important, meaningful or changing the lives of the people who interact with it. This is evidence."

Meert-Williston said that same feeling can extend to the public, who are welcome to visit the university's Archives and Research Collections Centre and request to view the neumes, along with other medieval-era documents.

"To really experience them and to hold the original in your hands, to feel the texture of the parchment, to see the writing that someone hand-wrote hundreds of years ago, it really does have an impact," she said.