A,B,C...

[jochanaan]

I got to wondering recently about the common note-naming system among English-speaking musicians.  When was it first used?  And how did we decide on A as a starting point?  I looked in Wikipedia (as a starting point only) for information, but could not even find out where to start looking.  The beginnings of solfege are well-documented, of course (thanks, Guido!), but not those of A-B-C-D-E-F-G.

Does anyone have any special knowledge, or has anyone done any research on this very basic question?

[Luke]

I don't know what you found on wikipedia, but I found this there: (  )

Music notation systems have used letters of the alphabet for centuries. The 6th-century philosopher Boethius is known to have used the first fourteen letters of the classical Latin alphabet,

A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-K-L-M-N-O (the letter J didn't exist until the 16th century),
to signify the notes of the two-octave range that was in use at the time[6] and in modern scientific pitch notation are represented as

A2-B2-C3-D3-E3-F3-G3-A3-B3-C4-D4-E4-F4-G4.
Though it is not known whether this was his devising or common usage at the time, this is nonetheless called Boethian notation. Although Boethius is the first author known to use this nomenclature in the literature, Ptolemy wrote of the two-octave range five centuries before, calling it the perfect system or complete system—as opposed to other, smaller-range note systems that did not contain all possible species of octave (i.e., the seven octaves starting from A, B, C, D, E, F, and G).

Following this, the range (or compass) of used notes was extended to three octaves, and the system of repeating letters A–G in each octave was introduced, these being written as lower-case for the second octave (a–g) and double lower-case letters for the third (aa–gg). When the range was extended down by one note, to a G, that note was denoted using the Greek G (Γ), gamma. (It is from this that the French word for scale, gamme derives, and the English word gamut, from "Gamma-Ut", the lowest note in Medieval music notation.)

The remaining five notes of the chromatic scale (the black keys on a piano keyboard) were added gradually; the first being B♭, since B was flattened in certain modes to avoid the dissonant tritone interval. This change was not always shown in notation, but when written, B♭ (B-flat) was written as a Latin, round "b", and B♮ (B-natural) a Gothic or "hard-edged" b. These evolved into the modern flat (♭) and natural (♮) symbols respectively. The sharp symbol arose from a barred b, called the "cancelled b".

In parts of Europe, including Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Norway, Denmark, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Finland and Iceland (and Sweden before about 1990s), the Gothic b transformed into the letter H (possibly for hart, German for hard, or just because the Gothic b resembled an H). Therefore, in German music notation, H is used instead of B♮ (B-natural), and B instead of B♭ (B-flat). Occasionally, music written in German for international use will use H for B-natural and Bb for B-flat (with a modern-script lower-case b instead of a flat sign). Since a Bes or B♭ in Northern Europe (i.e., a Bdouble flat elsewhere) is both rare and unorthodox (more likely to be expressed as Heses), it is generally clear what this notation means.

In Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Romanian, Greek, Russian, Mongolian, Flemish, Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Turkish notation the notes of scales are given in terms of Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Si rather than C-D-E-F-G-A-B. These names follow the original names reputedly given by Guido d'Arezzo, who had taken them from the first syllables of the first six musical phrases of a Gregorian Chant melody Ut queant laxis, which began on the appropriate scale degrees. These became the basis of the solfege system. "Do" later replaced the original "Ut" for ease of singing (most likely from the beginning of Dominus, Lord), though "Ut" is still used in some places. "Si" or "Ti" was added as the seventh degree (from Sancte Johannes, St. John, to whom the hymn is dedicated). The use of "Si" versus "Ti" varies regionally.

The two notation systems most commonly used today are the Helmholtz pitch notation system and the scientific pitch notation system. As shown in the table above, they both include several octaves, each starting from C rather than A. The reason is that the most commonly used scale in Western music is the major scale, and the sequence C-D-E-F-G-A-B (the C-major scale) is the simplest example of a major scale. Indeed, it is the only major scale that can be obtained using natural notes (the white keys on the piano keyboard) and is typically the first musical scale taught in music schools.

In a newly developed system, primarily in use in the United States, notes of scales become independent of music notation. In this system the natural symbols C-D-E-F-G-A-B refer to the absolute notes, while the names Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Ti are relativized and show only the relationship between pitches, where Do is the name of the base pitch of the scale, Re is the name of the second pitch, etc. The idea of so-called movable-do, originally suggested by John Curwen in the 19th century, was fully developed and involved into a whole educational system by Zoltán Kodály in the middle of the 20th century, which system is known as the Kodály method or Kodály concept.

[jochanaan]

Boethius, hmmm?  Interesting.

I was looking up "musicalnotation" rather than "musical note."  Should have kept it simple.

[Karl Henning]

That was a lesson from card catalogue days . . . search creatively  0:)

[jochanaan]

And how many here remember card catalogues?

[Sergeant Rock]

And how many here remember card catalogues?

I'm old enough to remember but old enough to have forgotten 

Sarge

[(poco) Sforzando]

I got to wondering recently about the common note-naming system among English-speaking musicians.  When was it first used?  And how did we decide on A as a starting point?  I looked in Wikipedia (as a starting point only) for information, but could not even find out where to start looking.  The beginnings of solfege are well-documented, of course (thanks, Guido!), but not those of A-B-C-D-E-F-G.

Don't forget that in the German system, B is our B-flat and H our B.

[jochanaan]

Don't forget that in the German system, B is our B-flat and H our B.

H no, I wasn't forgetting.