In the 800s monks invented a way of writing music down. Before that time all music was learned by heart, or it was forgotten as soon as it had been played. Look at this piece of music, which was written in 1420. You can see that it is not that different from modern written music. You might think that the colours and decoration make it more attractive!

A written piece of music like this one is called a score. Scores can be written for just one instrument or voice, or for many instruments or voices. If there is more than one part, they are written one above the other.

Sharing music

We call people who write music composers, because they make up, or compose, music. They write down their musical ideas so that musicians can play the music accurately. They are using music as a form of language to share their thoughts and feelings with the people who hear their music. Composers work in different ways. Some composers use a piano to play parts of the music they hear in their heads before they write it down. Some write many versions, or drafts, of a single piece of music, changing it over and over again until it is absolutely right.

We know that the German composer Ludwig van Beethoven wrote like this because many of his draft scores still exist today.

Other composers work completely in their heads and write down their music only when it is finally shaped. The Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart worked in this careful way.

A modern score

Today, modern composers are writing scores in different, new ways. Composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen from Germany use diagrams and pictures as well as notes to convey their musical ideas. This means that a modern score can look quite different from a traditional one. Part of this

Stockhausen composition is in the shape of a triangle.

Have you ever seen a piece of music like it?

But no matter how different scores can look, they all serve the same purpose. They tell the musicians what notes to play, the speed to play them and even the mood the composer wants to convey. A written score allows the musician to achieve a performance that is as close as possible to the music originally imagined by the composer.

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dodoMusic Book, Music Box, Piano, Sheet Music16 Oct, 2008