Staff (music) - History

History

The Staff as we know it today originated from musically annotated text, through the Gregorian Chants around the 12th to 13th centuries. Until this time, symbols were used in conjunction with text to represent pitch. However, when the chants were written, people began to use lines to represent pitch, in addition to the pitch symbols above the text. While at first only one line was used, eventually the system expanded to four lines and used mainly dots among those lines to represent pitch. However, different numbers of lines were used throughout Europe for different instruments. France soon began to incorporate five lines into its music, which became widespread by the 16th century, and was the norm throughout Europe by the 17th century. The names of the staff in some languages, such as the Italian pentagramma, reflects the importance of five lines. In 1342, the first music staff was made. It consisted of four lines and three spaces instead of the modern five and four. Five lines staff was made in Italy by Ugolino of Forlì.