Susan Rankin, Writing Sounds in Carolingian Europe: The Invention of Musical Notation. Cambridge Studies in Palaeography and Codicology, 15. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. xxiv + 404 pp. ISBN 978-1-108-42140-9

Abstract

Leo Treitler concluded his seminal study ‘Reading and Singing: On the Genesis of Occidental Music Writing’, published first in these pages thirty-five years ago, with the obiter dicta that understanding the origin of music writing ‘is a question of semiotics, not alone of paleography’.1 While not denying that music writing is a system of signs, Susan Rankin’s important book argues that the sudden appearance ‘within a period of probably not more than fifty years (and probably rather less)’ (p. 328) of varieties of music script in the ninth century can best be understood from the perspective of palaeography. During the course of the ninth century music books and fragments of music came to be accompanied by supralinear notations. By the end of the century music notation was commonplace and had developed its own broad conventions. But was the ‘invention of musical notation’ a paradigm shift? In an early example of the careful and judicious reasoning that characterises her investigation, Rankin answers that it was not (pp. 77– 84). Memory was at the heart of music production, obviously so when music texts did not come with signs, but even so when music texts did come equipped with signs. Memory now worked in tandem with signs, signs that were written with the same quill and ink as the alphabetic signs they accompanied and thus the subject matter of palaeography. Rankin’s new narrative succeeds on several levels. It offers a panoramic and nuanced view of Carolingian music notation that deftly