Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/114

52. Tablatures.—Incidental to the free use of instruments were systems of notation for them, called 'tablatures.' Several systems were in wide use, varying with the instrument in view and also with the country of their origin. They were alike in that they did not employ the staff, which belonged to vocal music. Yet the experiments with tablatures evidently had much to do with the perfecting of the staff-notation. Indeed, the latter is essentially a kind of tablature, whose ultimate supremacy is due to its adaptability to every species of music, instrumental as well as vocal.

What was called German or organ tablature was meant for keyboard instruments generally, and consisted of the letter-names of the intended tones written in horizontal lines that were broken at regular intervals by vertical bars to mark the measures—the whole resembling the modern Tonic Sol-Fa notation, except that the letters referred to the keys of the keyboard and not to solmization-syllables. Notes meant to be sounded together were ranged one above the other, and over each vertical column stood a sign to indicate the desired duration (a point for a breve, a stroke for a semibreve, a stroke with a side-pennant or hook for a minim, one with two hooks for a crotchet, etc.—all these signs being transitional forms from the old mensural notation). Rests were shown by dashes in the part where they were needed, with a duration-sign as before.

For other instruments, especially the lute, the same general scheme was used, but the notes were named, not by their letter-names, but by some letter or other character indicating what string and what finger were to be used. In these latter forms what looked like a staff was often employed, but its lines referred to the strings of the instrument, all the notes to be played on a given string being marked by letters on its particular line.

Fig. 53.—Lute Tablature (16th century).