Surprising Reason Sharps and Flats Look Like They Do
Why do sharps and flats look like they do? Did the sharp start out as an “S” and the flat as an “F?” Well, that’s not quite it, but they did start out as a “B!”
To show the evolution of why sharps and flats look like they do today, we have to go back to the beginning of written music – which had no real notes at all, just blobby rectangle-ly looking markings (called neumes) showing how the singing pitch should go up or down.
This is a photograph of an original illuminated music manuscript in the Church of St. Francis, Evora, Portugal. It shows how the monks who sang Gregorian chants (the first “hymns”) wrote down an idea of how the melody should go, up or down and how far, on this beginning of a formal staff (the lines and spaces).
Here’s another example:
By Helsinki University Library
The Gregorian Chant Started it All
The Gregorian chant was the early music of the Roman Catholic Church and was sung to accompany the text during the mass. Named to honor the medieval pope Gregory I, the chant was based on a “mode” – not the major scales we are familiar with today. Ever heard a Gregorian chant? Listen. It’s not anything near to the mood of “Happy Birthday To You!”
In early medieval German modal music, accidentals as we know them were not used, but they did use something to change just the B notes into what we would consider to be B flat and B natural. These were drawn based on the gothic letter “b”:
- The squared “hard” shape of the letter “b” formed a “sharp” – and the word “sharp” is a translation of the German “square B” (in many European languages).
- The rounded “soft” shape of the letter “b” formed a “flat” – and the word “flat” comes from the German “soft round B” (in many European languages).
The square shaped “b” eventually became the gothic letter “h” and formed a natural sign, even though it was not really used in early music.
and now for the definition of “sharp” . . .
The French word for “sharp” is dièse from French, (or diesis from the Greek) and means “higher in pitch.” In music, the sharped note is raised one half step (semitone) higher, going higher to the right on the keys.
Why do sharps and flats look like they do? Going back to the beginning of written music makes it easier to understand how ancient manuscript music characters evolved into the modern shapes of how sharps and flats look like today, and even the natural sign!
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