The Twelfth And Thirteenth Centuries

Throughout the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, rhythmic notation began to emerge. Medieval music presented rhythms in various modes. These rhythmic modes, created by the musicians of the Notre Dame school, represented six predetermined patterns of long and short note values. The performance of music utilizing these modes was based largely on the context of the patterns within the given piece. Around 1280, Franco of Cologne introduced the first cohesive notational system, which used note shapes to signify durations. This system was based on music written in triple meter with triple divisions, referred to as perfections. Rhythms outside of the realm of perfections were unable to be notated. As music began to progress, the demand for a method to notate in meters other than triple became evident.

Musicologists began expanding the notational system in a period of time known as the Ars Nova. Starting in the Fourteenth Century, instead of restricting rhythms to triple meter, the Ars Nova notation allowed rhythmic durations to be arranged in both twos and threes. Divisions of the beat became smaller, and the individual note shapes began to represent specific fixed durations, regardless of their context. During this time, the development of mensuration

Throughout the end of the Fourteenth Century, all the way to the end of the Fifteenth Century, the notational system experienced radical advancements. The Renaissance period brought the shift from diamond-shaped note heads to the round note heads used in modern notation, along with the use of bar lines. Note values continued to become shorter, and white and black note heads were implemented to differentiate between durations. Once the note values stabilized, every value was twice as long as the note value below it. After these innovations, composers were able to write a large variety of intricate and rhythmically demanding