Music

The notation symbols for the musical notes are different from modern notation, and are called neumes, a word deriving from the Greek neuma, meaning a nod or sign. There are various theories about the origins of this notation, but one widely held is that they evolved from the accentuation signs used with Greek and Roman literature when it was to be declaimed, indicating important points in the text by marking the rise and fall of the voice.

Before the late 12th century these symbols were not square, but looked more like grave and acute accents used in writing the French language today, and were called gravus and acutus. The gravus was gradually replaced by a dot. The State Library possesses a fragment from an 11th century Nocturnal which demonstrates this.

The settings for the hymns were part of a very old tradition, originating with St. Ambrose and rendered in Ambrosian chant, which was simpler than Gregorian. The psalms would have been rendered at this period in the same plain style, and both were usually contained in separate manuscript books.

As polyphonal music developed, and church music progressed outside the monasteries, the settings for the hymns and psalms became more elaborate, and a number of secular composers created their own versions which have become individually famous, such as Monteverdi's setting of Psalm 112, Beatus vir qui timet dominum, and Handel's setting of Psalm 45, My heart is inditing.