History of 5-lined Staff

Did you know that written music did not always have a five-lined staff? We don’t know for sure when musical notation was invented, but we have records of notation existing from about the ninth century. At first, the notation was simply little marks called neumes placed above the words that were sung. These neumes indicated whether the melody went up or down and how many notes were to be sung per word. Later, a single horizontal line representing one musical pitch was penned into the parchment with neumes oriented around it. In the eleventh century, a monk named Guido of Arezzo added lines of different colors. Over time, improvements led to our current five-lined staff with definite musical pitches attached to the lines and spaces. As these improvements were made, music required less rote memory to learn and now an individual musician can learn a piece of music accurately with only the manuscript or printed piece itself as a companion!