Music manuscripts are handwritten sources of

music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspe ...

. Generally speaking, they can be written on

paper Paper is a thin sheet material produced by mechanically or chemically processing cellulose fibres derived from wood, rags, grasses or other vegetable sources in water, draining the water through fine mesh leaving the fibre evenly distribu ...

parchment Parchment is a writing material made from specially prepared untanned skins of animals—primarily sheep, calves, and goats. It has been used as a writing medium for over two millennia. Vellum is a finer quality parchment made from the skins ...

. If the manuscript contains the

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Def ...

's handwriting it is called an

autograph An autograph is a person's own handwriting or signature. The word ''autograph'' comes from Ancient Greek (, ''autós'', "self" and , ''gráphō'', "write"), and can mean more specifically: Gove, Philip B. (ed.), 1981. ''Webster's Third New Inter ...

. Music manuscripts can contain

musical notation Music notation or musical notation is any system used to visually represent aurally perceived music played with instruments or sung by the human voice through the use of written, printed, or otherwise-produced symbols, including notation f ...

as well as texts and images. There exists a wide variety of types from sketches and fragments, to compositional scores and presentation copies of musical works.

Earliest music manuscripts

The earliest written sources of Western European music can be found in medieval manuscripts of the late 9th century that contain liturgical texts. Above these texts small symbols (

neume A neume (; 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 nec ...

s) indicated the shape of the melodic lines. Only a few manuscripts survive from that time. New systems were devised over the centuries.Geoffrey Chew and Richard Rastall, " Mensural notation from 1500" (Notation, §III, History of Western Notation, 4), ''New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', rev. ed., 2001.

Preparation of manuscripts and copying of music

In the past, each composer was required to draw their own

staff Staff may refer to: Pole * Staff, a weapon used in stick-fighting ** Quarterstaff, a European pole weapon * Staff of office, a pole that indicates a position * Staff (railway signalling), a token authorizing a locomotive driver to use a particula ...

lines (staves) onto blank paper. Eventually, staff paper was manufactured pre-printed with staves as a labor-saving technique. The composer could then compose music directly onto the lines in pencil or ink. Until the arrival of more modern methods, music (unless

printed Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The e ...

) had to be written by hand. For larger scale works, a

copyist A copyist is a person that makes duplications of the same thing. The term is sometimes used for artists who make copies of other artists' paintings. However, the modern use of the term is almost entirely confined to music copyists, who are emplo ...

was often employed to hand-copy individual parts (for each musician) from a composer's musical score. With the advent of the personal computer in the late 1980s and beyond, music typesetting could now be accomplished by a

graphics Graphics () are visual images or designs on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, screen, paper, or stone, to inform, illustrate, or entertain. In contemporary usage, it includes a pictorial representation of data, as in design and manufacture, ...

computer software made for this purpose, such as

Dorico Dorico () is a scorewriter software; along with Finale and Sibelius, it is one of the three leading professional-level music notation programs. Dorico's development team consists of most of the former core developers of a rival software, Sibe ...

Finale Finale may refer to: Pieces of music * Finale (music), the last movement of a piece * ''Finale'' (album), a 1977 album by Loggins and Messina * "Finale B", a 1996 song from the rock opera ''Rent'' * "Finale", a song by Anthrax from ''State of E ...

, Musescore, or

Sibelius Jean Sibelius ( ; ; born Johan Julius Christian Sibelius; 8 December 186520 September 1957) was a Finnish composer of the late Romantic and early-modern periods. He is widely regarded as his country's greatest composer, and his music is often ...

, which has reduced the necessity of music manuscripts.

References

External links

Choral Public Domain Library
Free downloadable sheet choral music
Petrucci Music Library
Free downloadable sheet music and scans of early editions
Répertoire International des Sources Musicales
free online database to search for current locations of thousands of music manuscripts from around the world {{DEFAULTSORT:Music Manuscript Musical terminology Music sources

Earliest music manuscripts

Preparation of manuscripts and copying of music

See also

References

External links