(Fr. portée; Ger. Liniensystem, System; It. sistema, rigo).
In Western notation a set of lines on, between, above and below which notes of music are written. A five-line staff has been the most widely used type since north French manuscripts of the early 13th century containing polyphony. A four-line staff has been used for plainchant since the late 11th century. Staves are also used in Tablature: in music for string and wind instruments they represent the strings or holes of the instrument, and have digits denoting which fingers are to touch the strings or holes; in keyboard tablature the lines denote specific pitches. Except in tablature for string and wind instruments, the staff carries low notes on its lowest line, high notes on its highest, and may be supplemented above and below by leger lines. Notes are prefaced by a clef indicating the pitch of the line on which it is placed (and hence of the other lines of the staff). Two or more staves, joined by a brace, form a system.
The earliest surviving examples of a staff date from the end of the 9th century. In Musica enchiriadis (c860 according to Handschin and Dronke, c900 according to Smits van Waesberghe; see Musica enchiriadis, Scolica enchiriadis, §2) a set of lines called chordae (‘strings’ – an interesting link with tablature) are used, one for each pitch, a 2nd apart. To the left of each line appears a dasian letter giving its pitch. The letter ‘T’ or ‘S’ to the left of each space denotes the interval of a tone or semitone between each chorda. Syllables of a chant text are set on the lines, indicating the pitch at which they are to be sung. The manuscript F-VAL 337, probably the earliest surviving copy (not later than 900), uses an eight-line staff (see fig.1).
Hucbald’s De harmonica institutione (c900) contains an example of a six-line staff, bearing syllables of chant text in the same way as Musica enchiriadis, with the spaces designated tone or semitone but without dasian letters. Hucbald specifically equated the lines with the strings of the cithara: ‘Porro exemplum semitonii advertere potes in cithara sex chordarum, inter tertiam et quartam chordam’ (Gerbert, in GerbertS, i, 109, omitted the lowest line; B-Br 10078–95, f.87r, facs. in Smits van Waesberghe, 1969, p.107, shows that the text syllables should touch the lines, although the modern reproductions that appear to equate a syllable with an interval do have predecessors in medieval manuscripts: see Apel, p.205). The link with early hexachord theory is unclear.
Such diagrammatic staves were also used in the organum instruction of Musica enchiriadis, Scolica enchiriadis and their successors throughout the Middle Ages, sometimes necessitating staves of 18 lines, as many as there were dasian letters. But this system of notation was a teaching aid not used in functional liturgical manuscripts.
All neumatic notations contained an element of the distinction between high and low notes in the very shape of their neumes. By the turn of the millennium Beneventan and Aquitanian notations were diastematic, that is, individual neumes were placed higher or lower on the page relative to one another, though not clearly enough for completely certain modern transcription. By the mid-11th century Aquitanian notation regularly used a single dry-point (scratched) line, whose pitch varied according to the mode of the piece (a table is given in Stäblein, p.41). The author of the Quaestiones in musica suggested a mode-linked technique of using a single coloured line, with different colours for different modes; but he wrote half a century after and in knowledge of Guido of Arezzo’s teaching.
Guido of Arezzo, in Aliae regulae (c1030), recommended that lines should be drawn for every other pitch, a 3rd apart, so that notes of a scale would be set alternately on a line or in a space. He further recommended that one or more of the lines be coloured to denote its pitch (he preferred a red F line and a yellow C line), or that a letter be set in front of at least one of the lines to denote its pitch (see Clef, fig.1b). His principles, in one variant or another, were gradually adopted all over Europe, at different times in different places. Central Italy took up the coloured-line scheme quickly (Smits van Waesberghe, 1951, cites 17 manuscripts written by c1100). Coloured lines were slightly less common elsewhere, but use of the Guidonian staff with a clef spread rapidly through advanced European centres of music, especially those of the Low Countries. The Beneventan and west Aquitanian areas did not adopt it until nearer 1200. German Switzerland was particularly conservative; although isolated earlier manuscripts use it (e.g. CH-E 366, 12th century, with four dry-point lines, red F line, F and C clefs; facs. in Stäblein, p.187), the staff was not generally used there until the 15th century. Smits van Waesberghe (1951) showed that references to lines in use at Corbie Abbey in the 10th century (F-AM 524; M. Gerbert: De cantu et musica sacra, St Blasien, 1774, ii, 61) and in the prologue to Pseudo-Odo’s Dialogus de musica are both post-Guidonian.
Lines of different colours were not often used after the 13th century (German scribes again being the most conservative in this respect). Most surviving manuscripts have four-line staves (Guido did not specify a number), for which a four-nibbed pen would have been used. Often all four might be coloured red. These characteristics of chant books persisted into the age of printing and to the present day.
The more extended range of each voice in polyphonic music led to the general adoption of a five-line staff, as in GB-Lbl Add.36881 (c1200), where the lower part (with the chant) frequently has a four-line staff and the organal voice a five-line one (dry-point lines; see fig.2). The north French sources of polyphony of the 13th century consistently use red or black five-line staves. Exceptions to a practice that has been standard ever since are the use of a six-line staff by scribes of Italian trecento music and a few later Italian-influenced repertories (F-CH 564, I-Bc Q15, TRmr 89), and the use of six or more lines for keyboard music (the florid upper line of the music of the Buxheim Organbook, D-Mbs Cim.352b, is written on a seven-line staff; see Notation, fig.108). Again, this was to cope with parts of generally more extended range. Occasionally the left hand had more lines than the right hand (Frescobaldi’s Toccate e partite d’intavolatura di cembalo, 1614, left hand eight lines, right hand six; see also Bar, illustration). Frequently both had a middle C line (Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, GB-Cfm 32.g.29, two six-line staves). Staves of more than five lines were not generally used after the 17th century.
See also Notation, §III, 3(i), 4(v), and Score.
J. Wolf: Handbuch der Notationskunde (Leipzig, 1913–19)
W. Apel: The Notation of Polyphonic Music, 900–1600 (Cambridge, MA, 1942, rev. 5/1953/R)
J. Smits van Waesberghe: ‘The Musical Notation of Guido of Arezzo’, MD, v (1951), 15–53 [Eng. trans. of pp.47–85 of De musico-paedagogico et theoretico Guidone Aretino, 1953]
J. Smits van Waesberghe: Musikerziehung, Musikgeschichte in Bildern, iii/3 (Leipzig, 1969)
B. Stäblein: Schriftbild der einstimmigen Musik, Musikgeschichte in Bildern, iii/4 (Leipzig, 1975)
DAVID HILEY