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TYPES OF THE HEXACHORD 293
original scheme gave the five open vowels for the first five notes (a
duplication at la being unavoidable), the substitution of tu for ut,
instead of do, would have been better. The significance of staff nota
tion for the development of polyphony is obvious. Before it came into
general use the transmission of music depended very largely on tradi
tion and the example set by expert singers. This explains the emphasis
laid by the chroniclers on the journeys made to St. Gall and Metz by
the legendary Romanus and Petrus, 1 or by James, the papal precentor,
to York. The acceptance of a new system of precise pitch-notation
made it possible for singers to perform music at sight, and for
authentic copies to be sent from one place to another. The notator
was now as important as the cantor. Abortive attempts to denote
actual pitch were also made in other directions, by alphabetical
letters or by signs of one kind or another. They were experiments in
answer to a demand, but as we have seen akeady (p. 278) they led
nowhere. 2
THE NOTATION OF TIME
So soon as two or more notes were to be sounded in one voice
against one note in the other the singers had to agree upon some kind
of a convention by which the voices could be held together in the
intended relation. Passing over, as they were, from a period in which
their notation was mnemonic, not descriptive, we should not expect
to find the scribes using all at once an accurate temporal or mensural
notation. For this reason there is, and always will be, a high degree
of conjecture about our transcriptions of nearly all twelfth-century
music. We must recognize the tentative and empirical nature of the
notation employed, and the fact that apparently no two scribes used
exactly the same system. Apel justly observes:
Throughout the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries the mech
anics of notation were in a state of continuous flux and rapid change,
produced and paralleled by an evolution in musical style the progress of
which lies mainly in the field of rhythm. ... In place of methodical and
systematic explanations, given frequently in the form of rules, we must
treat the subject in a more flexible manner, and must approach it chiefly
from the evolutionary point of view. 3
1 For a discussion of this journey see Dom Rombaut van Doren, Etude sur Vinfluence
musicale de Vabbaye de Saint-Gall (Brussels, 1925), pp. 127-33.
a Those who are interested in examining them more dosely will find a full account
in Dom G. Suflol, Introduction a la pallograpMe musicale gr^gorienne (Paris, 1935).
* The Notation of Polyphonic Music (Cambridge, Mass., 1942), pp. 199-200.