The Origins of Modern Notation in Early Keyboard Music

"The Origins of Modern Notation in Early Keyboard Music." Modern notation, which is based on absolute note values and organized in time units of equal duration (measures) separated by vertical lines (bar lines), can only partially be traced back to earlier mensural notation. Whereas the mensural system is associated with the structure of vocal polyphony as a hierarchy of relative note values, the earliest examples of keyboard notation from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries represent an entirely different approach to writing music. This contains the basic ingredients of the modern notational concept, which, accordingly, is not primarily a product of the leading medieval and renaissance practice, but rather of a notational sidetrack which later moved into the center and opened up new possibilities of composition.