Sheet music, sometimes called “score,” is the hand-written or printed form of musical notation, or the system that represents aurally perceived music via the use of written symbols. The history of musical notation, and therefore of sheet music, is a long one. There are those who hold that the earliest sheet music known is a fragment of a cuneiform tablet from Nippur, an ancient Babylonian city, and dates from approximately 2000 BCE. While this music was written on a clay tablet rather than paper, it still constitutes sheet music because the term “sheet” merely differentiates music on paper from audio presentation. So although the tablet’s notations are fragmentary and somewhat simple, it is probably safe to say that they represent the earliest recorded melodies in the world.

Anyone familiar with ancient Greek civilization will not be surprised to learn that the sheet music of those people was relatively complex. Ancient Greek musical notation was capable of representing pitch, note duration and, to a limited extent, harmony. It consisted of symbols placed above text syllables and was in use from at least the 6th century BCE until approximately the 4th century CE, a date that coincides with the fall of the Roman Empire.

Sheet music, like Europe as a whole, suffered a major blow when Rome fell. The art of writing music all but vanished during the times that followed, which are commonly referred to as the Dark Ages. However, by the middle of the 9th century, musical notation began to revive thanks to the Roman Catholic Church. The Gregorian chant was a ubiquitous form of worship in those days, and the monks performing it developed specific symbols, neumes, in order to record it on paper.  Read more...