Historical Background
The Greeks (who named the notes after the first seven letters of the alphabet) did not have a reliable way of writing music down, so medieval monks had little to go on: only the plainchant that was handed down to them orally. They had a mental library of melodies to cover the liturgical calendar. They used 'neumes' to help them remember the tune. Neumes are graphic representations of hand signals and gestures to tell singers if the notes were going up or down and how long they were. Every region of Europe had its own system. It was fine if you knew the tune already, as they were a means of simply jogging the memory.

The Big Bang came from Northern Italy in the early 1000s. It was the thin red line that acted as a fixed reference pitch for the notes to hook on to. Now you could know where the tune started and ended. It was a great leap forward for western music. Guido Monaco (or Guido of Arezzo) saw its significance in the 1020s. His choristers were the first to read music at sight from the page. The fact that someone could sing a tune they had never heard before simply by looking at something on a page was considered one of the great marvels of the time.

Guido wrote two treatises on the teaching of singing. He also invented the do re mi (or ut re mi) singing scale, still in use today, to help with intervals.

Guido decreed that the thin red line represented 'f'. This was the start of the idea of key. A blob above the line meant you sang a note above f and a blob below meant you sang the note below. His four-line stave became universally adopted. The fifth line was added in the fourteenth century.

His methods revolutionised the teaching of singing, but he couldn't have foreseen the effect his new notation would have on the course of western music. He paved the way for a new species of musician: the composer. Now the responsibility for the music shifted from the performer to the composer. The composer's name began to appear on the page within one hundred years of Guido's invention. It could be transported to another country and performed there. The ability to see the notes on the page also made it easier for counterpoint to develop. Two hundred years later, three parts were being written, and a hundred and fifty years after that, four parts were being written.

Composers were soon able to construct forms and long pieces that could not have been learnt from memory. Billions of harmonic combinations were now possible. As the centuries rolled by, musical scores became more and more complex. More refinements were added so that an encyclopaedic musical language developed.

By the twentieth century, Stravinsky was stretching the orchestral score to its limits by asking for multiple layers of melody and simultaneous layered rhythms. By the end of the twentieth century, western notation had a grip on the world's music.

No other culture managed to create such an invention. The Chinese had invented tablature, which is used today in the west by players of the lute. The diagrammatic notation used for the guitar is a type of tablature, too. Tablature simply tells you where to place your fingers on the instrument. It assumes you know the piece already, as it doesn't indicate the tune, speed or rhythm.

The situation today
Nowadays, all sorts of music from other cultures is transcribed into western notation. Even jazz musicians use it as a musical template from which to improvise. Courtney Pine uses it as a starting point to indicate the chords and basic melody, where the accents fall, and the performer does the rest. He compares music to a language: it enables you to communicate with other musicians.

The programme ends with a look at new technologies, showing how far have moved on from printing. Sibelius software enables composers to key in notes or simply play pieces and the program will write down the music for them. However, this is very accurate and will write every single error you make, too. Care is needed in using software like this, and you really need to be taught the old-fashioned way in order to use it effectively.