The Neume Notation Project

Above is a collection of square-neume symbols. This kind of notation developed in the high Middle Ages. It is used today (in the stylized form shown above) to typeset books of Gregorian chant for liturgical use.



Above is a collection of cursive neumes from the early period of Aquitanian musical notation. These marks were placed by the scribe above the text to be chanted; the relative vertical position of the neumes indicated (approximate) pitch. There was no staff line written on the manuscripts.

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Many other stylized neume sets have been catagorized by musicologists. The two sets shown above can be taken as, in some sense, representative of the technical dificulties of the problem.
The author's Postscript font also contains a subset of modern music symbols: the ones most commonly used by musicologists for transcribing medieval manuscripts.