Western’s medieval music collection gets rare addition
Special collections librarian Deborah Meert-Williston said she couldn’t believe what she was seeing when she first noticed “little squiggle” markings above the text in pages of manuscript waste, obsolete documents repurposed as bindings or reinforcement materials in medieval books. The reused materials can yield historical gems, and Meert-Williston was quick to spot some while searching manuscripts online.
“I took action right away,” she said of eagerly emailing photos of the parchment pages to Western music professor Kate Helsen.
Meert-Williston’s enthusiasm was matched by Helsen, who dropped what she was doing to immediately confirm the findings as medieval neumes, one of the earliest forms of written music.
“We didn’t have any at Western,” Helsen said of the neumes. “They’re rare enough that I got super excited when I thought, ‘We could actually have them in our collection.’”
The neumes offer a glimpse into the medieval age when people were just beginning to conceive of how music could exist in a written form. Unlike modern sheet music that uses notes arranged vertically on a five-line staff to indicate pitch, the neumes are adiastematic, meaning they lack a vertical arrangement of notes.
“They show melodic direction and rhythmic patterns without specifying an exact pitch. You can’t sight-read these neumes,” Helsen explained. “The people who were singing from them already had the music in their head. This was their little shorthand for how to remember the melody.”
Read full article (by Colleen MacDonald, via Western News, April 30, 2025) including a video of Kate Helsen getting an excited first look at the medieval music manuscripts
PHOTO: Western's Archives and Special Collections Library now houses two early examples of written medieval music. (L to R) Librarian Deborah Meert-Williston, music professor Kate Helsen and music library director Brian McMillan display the two parchment documents containing medieval nuemes. (Colleen MacDonald/Western News)
