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The mediaeval development of musical notation has an important bearing on the history of music as an art. It brought music into direct contact with the graphic arts and must have helped to suggest that the melodies written in a book were no less beautiful and no less permanent than the pictures which illustrated the text. The monks who invented notation in order to preserve liturgical music intact and uncorrupted from the vain errors of sinful man did as a matter of fact thereby provide him with the means of developing his error scientifically. It occurred to someone that secular music could be recorded in notes as well as sacred. The alphabet ceased to be practically a monopoly of the Church. The social status of the musician rose as soon as notation made it clear that the composition of a piece of music could be a thing apart from its performance. When music can be read from notes its hearers inevitably begin to realize that the individual performer has no exclusive property in it. His voice may have lost none of its thrill, but the listener knows now that interpretation is not the same thing as spontaneous creation. If a song or a dance tune is thought worth the trouble of writing out, it means that it is held to be worth preserving. The musician who made it begins to take rank with the learned clerk instead of being classed with tumblers and acrobats, rogues and vagabonds. The cultured amateur makes his appearance in the ages of chivalry.
Music, considered as a fine art, belongs to the privileged classes alone. No doubt the illiterate people had their songs and dances, but the ordered progress of musical development was of necessity carried on mainly by those who could read and write. It is in this period that the musical styles of East and West are sharply differentiated by the discovery of the principle of harmony. Harmony, the simultaneous sounding of two or more different notes, is so indispensable a part of music to-day that many people find it almost impossible to conceive of an art of music based on melody alone. The most unlearned are so accustomed to the sounds of harmonic music that although their natural instinct inclines them first towards pure melody it may be doubted whether they can recall an ordinary tune without at least some vague half-conscious recollection of a harmonic basis to it. This suspicion is confirmed by the fact that many tunes have become widely popular in which the melody has at moments no significance apart from the underlying harmonies.
The early history of harmonic experiment is still a matter of controversy; but whether it came from the Netherlands, from England or from Scandinavia, it undoubtedly originated in the North of Europe, and for several generations the chief focus of musical development was centred in Flanders. This geographical factor has its significance. Melodic music is individualistic, harmony is co-operative. When two voices sing different notes simultaneously in a piece of music, they are obliged to show a certain consideration for one another. In the first place they must not try to shout each other down. Secondly, they must agree to accept some common system of rhythm and pace, if there is to be ordered principle of consonance between them. And if their music is to be pleasing in its general effect, they must accommodate their voices one to the other so that they blend agreeably. Each of these points involves a certain self-sacrifice and subordination of the individual to the community which is fundamentally irksome to the Mediterranean temperament. The distinction between composer and performer becomes sharper than ever. The history of musical composition from the time of Sumer is icumen in (1260) to that of Josquin des Prés (c. 1445–1521) shows the persistent effort of musicians to curb the recalcitrant independence of the individual parts in the interests of harmony and order. The writing down of music no doubt helped considerably towards this. The tradition of extemporary singing, even in harmony, was kept up for a very long time, but it is obvious that awkwardnesses which might be overlooked at a single impromptu performance would be submitted to criticism and correction when they had been set down on paper. The Netherland school of the fifteenth century devoted much study to intricate technical devices, and we see here the most conspicuous example in early times of music in which emotion is completely sacrificed to mechanical ingenuity. It need hardly be said that this elaborate art was employed exclusively in the service of the Church. The extreme examples of it can hardly have afforded any listener the opportunity of enjoying the sensuous pleasure of sound, either in single voices or in the combinations of its harmony. Nor can we imagine that it was a type of music which evoked associative images. A product of the intellect it certainly was; but Apollo must have been as little responsible for its inspiration as Dionysus. It was discipline; and at any rate its poverty of melodic invention, its passionless indifference to sensuous beauty and its rigid obedience to rule may have represented the three monastic virtues.