Overview

Music notation, like other form of writing, aids memory by means of visual represention of what is intrinsically an aural medium. The developmentof music notation in Europe shows an increasing graphic control over various aspects of sound. The problem of how torepresent music visually was solved first in the matter of pitch. By the early eleventh century, all graphic signs needed to notate pitch unambiguously had been introduced, so that the principal innovations in music notation made during the high and late Middle Ages and the Renaissance were in the domain of rhythm and meter. However although musicians of the period had at their disposal everything they needed to notate pitches unambiguously, modern readers of carly music aources, are bedevilled by a persistent problem in reconstructing the intended pitches. This is known somewhat informally as the problem of musica ficta.