Musical Notation

Musical notation has been written and passed down for centuries. It has spanned everything from Gregorian Chants and neumes to modern day music and the musical staff that we write it on utilizing bars and heads to symbolize notes. These are only two of the many forms of notation that we've utilized to write down our music, but for years this was a task that had to be done manually. In 1501, Ottaviano dei Petrucci's Harmonice Musices Odhecaton A became the first polyphonic music printed utilizing moveable type. Below is a brief exploration of the Royal Holloway of London Repository, a resource that allows one to explore hundreds of the earliest instances of utilizing a printing press for the purposes of creating sheet music, among them some of Petrucci's, earliest works.

Example from the database, Petrucci's Missarum diversorum auctorum. Liber primus., dated 1508. This specific image is labeled as "superius, folio 4."

Royal Holloway University of London Repository

Search Features

Collections

The "Collections" option allows one to limit search results to the following options:

- Within all resources

- Bedford College Nursing Papers

- Early Music Online

- Offprints (CLA) Digitised Content v 1.0

- Offprints (CLA) Holdings v 1.0

- Royal Holloway Research Online

Advanced Searches

The Advanced Searches option allows one to limit searches to specifically those found within "Royal Holloway Research Online."

Remote Repositories

The Remote Repositories option allows one to limit search results to those found in the RHUL Library Catalogue.

Results Filter

The Results Filter feature allows one to filter the results based on the following options:

- Filter by Owner

- Filter by Date Modified

Results Features

After one has entered a search and then selected one of the resulting options, one is able to view not only the selected resource, but is also provided with a series of subsections that include information about said resource. These features are listed below.

Example of some of the information included when one clicks on a result in the database, in this case for Petrucci's Missarum diversorum auctorum. Liber primus.

Summary

This section provides a brief summary of the resource, such as the format of the music or the printer.

Details

This section provides the following details:

- Standardised Title

- Transcribed Title

- Variant Title

- Date

- Imprint

- Format

- Place

- Subject

- Source

Identifiers

This section includes the identifier utilized to locate this specific resource.

Notes

This section includes any particularly notable comments or thoughts that have been listed regarding this resource.