Renewed reflection on the early history of neumes has become an integral and necessary part of the problem complex that surrounds the central fact about which there is wide agreement, that the melodic tradition of Gregorian chant had become stabilized prior to the inscription of the melodies in musical notation.
We now recognize the following as distinguishable but integrally related topics: the accumulation and dissemination of an unwritten tradition of Gregorian chant, in itself and in relation to the Old Roman tradition; the invention of systems of musical notation and their development as they were adapted for the creation and dissemination of a written tradition of the chant; the interaction of the written and unwritten traditions, in performance and in the written transmission.
My title speaks of the beginnings of notational practice, not the origin of notation. The new round of discussion has indeed brought up theories of origin, all recycling, with new evidence and interpretation, one or another of the theories that had been advanced earlier.
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