Neu’ma, Neume

r. In Greg or i an music, a melisma—2. In medieval mus. notation, one of the characters used to represent tones, inflections, and graces. They were of different and fluctuating form and signification, at first with a curious outward resemblance to modern short-hand, later changing to coarse and heavy strokes and flourishes. The earlier neumes (8th to 13th century) can hardly be poet a deciphered, even with the aid of the letters (/ittere significative) sometimes added, or of the lines (inception of staff-notation) employed, from the roth century onward, to fix the pitch; for they were le an attempt at exact notation in the modern sense, than an aid to memory, ‘a system of mnemonic signs. ‘They are important as being the first attempt to exhibit the relative pitch of notes by their relative height on the page; they gradually paset over into the mole guadratz and ligatures of Plain Song.