Are you wondering what a “heightened neume” is? Maybe you are taking our course in Early Sacred Music and thinking, “Wow, something new about heighted neumes!” Either way, there’s something new to report.

First, let’s say what a “heighted neume” is. Heighted neumes were a 10th-century development in music notation that showed, for the first time, specific pitches. Music had been preserved primarily through oral transmission for centuries—a reliable way to learn a melody. But oral transmission works best within small communities and across short distances. So, when Charlemagne set out to standardize the chant throughout the Holy Roman Empire around 800, new tools were needed to transmit the music across long distances. In short, someone needed to write it down.

Writing things down sounds, to us moderns, like a more reliable method than oral transmission, doesn’t it? But written-down music captures only part of a melody, not all of its nuances, so reading the notation can give a less accurate rendition than actually hearing the melody.

Still, the elements of music that can be captured in writing will be well preserved across time and distance. That’s what Charlemagne needed to succeed in standardizing Gregorian chant across his Empire.

Notation developed gradually, beginning in the 9th Century with neumes—little squiggles written above the text to give general information about the direction of the melody. Then came the explosive development of “heighted neumes” in the 10th Century. This system let singers see the whole melody in graphic form. It plotted the intervals at consistent heights, pretty much the same way we do now, except we have the staff (lines and spaces) as a visual reference.

So all of this happened long ago. Could anything be new about it?

Yes! Canadian musicologist James Grier has identified a monk at St. Martial in Limoges as likely responsible for this innovation: Adémar de Chabannes (c. 989-1034). He identified Adémar’s handwriting and was able to show that Adémar had written all of the music notation in two manuscripts from a monastery in Aquitaine called St. Martial, one of the most important musical centers of the era.

Dr. Michael Dodds, whose commentary figures very prominently in our courses at Professor Carol, especially the Early Sacred Music course, called this discovery to our attention. And so we want to recommend Professor Grier’s very engaging 9-minute podcast to you.

Let Grier’s enthusiastic story open the door to a critical development in our Western musical heritage. You’ll also get a taste of just how much passion today’s Medieval scholars bring to their studies/research.