In music, a notehead is the part of a

note Note, notes, or NOTE may refer to: Music and entertainment * Musical note, a pitched sound (or a symbol for a sound) in music * Notes (album), ''Notes'' (album), a 1987 album by Paul Bley and Paul Motian * ''Notes'', a common (yet unofficial) sho ...

, usually elliptical in shape, whose placement on the staff indicates the pitch, to which modifications are made that indicate duration. Noteheads may be the same shape but colored completely black or white, indicating the

note value In music notation, a note value indicates the relative duration of a note, using the texture or shape of the '' notehead'', the presence or absence of a ''stem'', and the presence or absence of ''flags/ beams/hooks/tails''. Unmodified note valu ...

(i.e., rhythmic duration). In a whole note, the notehead, shaped differently than shorter notes, is the only component of the note. Shorter note values attach a

stem Stem or STEM may refer to: Plant structures * Plant stem, a plant's aboveground axis, made of vascular tissue, off which leaves and flowers hang * Stipe (botany), a stalk to support some other structure * Stipe (mycology), the stem of a mushr ...

to the notehead, and possibly beams or flags. The longer double whole note can be written with vertical lines surrounding it, two attached noteheads, or a rectangular notehead.Gerou, Tom & Lusk, Linda
''Essential Dictionary of Music Notation''.
Alfred Music, 1996, p. 210. An "x" shaped notehead may be used to indicate percussion, percussive effects ( ghost notes), or speaking. A square, diamond, or box shaped notehead may be used to indicate a

natural Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...

or artificial harmonic. A small notehead can be used to indicate a grace note.

History

Noteheads ultimately derive from the

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 used to notate

Gregorian chant Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic, unaccompanied sacred song in Latin (and occasionally Greek) of the Roman Catholic Church. Gregorian chant developed mainly in western and central Europe dur ...

. The punctum, seen at right, is the simplest of the shapes and most clearly anticipates the modern notehead. When placed on a

clef A clef (from French: 'key') is a musical symbol used to indicate which notes are represented by the lines and spaces on a musical stave. Placing a clef on a stave assigns a particular pitch to one of the five lines, which defines the pit ...

, the position of a notehead indicates the relative pitch of a note. The development of different colors of noteheads, and the use of it to indicate rhythmic values, was the use of white

mensural notation Mensural notation is the musical notation system used for European vocal polyphonic music from the later part of the 13th century until about 1600. The term "mensural" refers to the ability of this system to describe precisely measured rhythmi ...

, adopted around 1450. Franco of Cologne, ancient composer and music theorist, codified a system of rhythm notation. He explained this system in his work, ''Ars Cantus Mensurabilis'' (“The Art of Measurable Music”), circa 1280. In this system, the relative duration of notes was indicated by the note shapes. The noteheads were rectangles, squares, or diamonds depending on the note length. This system was expanded during the Ars Nova period. Shortly before the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass id ...

, scribes began to write the notes of the Franconian and Ars Nova style with open noteheads. During the Renaissance, composers added shorter note durations that used filled-in noteheads. Near the end of the 16th century, the square or diamond-shaped notes changed to the round noteheads that are used today.Burkholder, J.P., Grout, D.J., & Palisca, C.V. (2006). A history of western music 7th ed.. New York, NY: W.W Norton & Company.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:notehead Musical notation

History

See also

References