CHROMATIC LYRE NOTATION

A modern chromatic lyre is completely new reincarnation of the instrument that has been here for thousands of years but its new form has just a little in common with the ancient lyre. A development of new lyres has started around 1926 and today it is going on worldwide. One of the recent major inovations is a redesign of the strings arrangement on a lyre that has been made by Jan Braunstein. The strings on the lyre are divided in two rows. Historically, a layout similar to traditional piano keyboard has been used on modern lyres - one row for the natural notes and the other for the flats and sharps. The new arrangement, however, consists in splitting the chromatic scale in two whole-tone scales, a semitone appart in each row on a lyre. Among other advantages of the new setup, the lyre has become an isomorphic instrument so any given musical interval have the same physical distance and can be played with the same (or mirrored) fingering in any key. It also means that the setup is “key-indepentent” and truely chromatic, giving a lot of freedom no mattter what scale or key is used. After a few years of comprehensive testing of this system it has become clear that there could be a better way of notating the music for new lyres than a traditional diatonic notation can offer... So this is an overview of the new, isomorphic notation system for chromatic lyres:

Basics: Chromatic Staff & Notes

Staves & Clefs

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The basic element of the new lyre notation is a “chromatic staff” where each of the 12 notes has its own unique place, sharp & flat symbols are not used anymore. The staff consists of only 2 lines per octave. Filled and hollow noteheads help indicate a note pitch and are no more linked to note lenght. Two notehead types also represent the notes in each of the two whole-tone scales as they occur on the lyre so an optimal fingering of both hands can be easily  judged already by a quick look. In normal circumstances, the white notes are played with the right hand and black notes are played with the left hand.

As well as on the whole-tone chromatic lyres, the physical distances between notes reflect the actual musical relations. Twelve-tone chromatic scale with a half-step between every two following notes is musically linear (with possible nuances according to actual temperament which is irrelevant for notation anyway) and it also looks linear in chromatic notation. Below is the chromatic scale spreading 4 octaves from C to c’’’ written in 4-octaves connected chromatic staff compared to a traditional diatonic notaion using bass and treble clef. The alto clef in chromatic staff indicates the position of c’ (middle c).

In real life, the chromatic staff always consists of its simplest form (1 octave) stacked up to cover desired range. The notes keep the same positions in all octaves. The alto clef (C-clef) always sits in the middle octave and points to c’. The basic form of chromatic staff contains two “stacks” (2 octaves) and is roughly equivalent to a standard 5-line staff. 

The staves can be used with the same manners as in traditional notation and they can also be connected with accolade when desired like in any standard harp or piano notation. However, when using with lyres where both hands usually interact with each other rather than playing separate voices, it is recommended to use “stacked” connection where the result is a single staff spreading several octaves. Such a connection is represented by a bracket. When it is not possible to use standard alto clef (the written music is either too high above c’ or too low below it), alternative symbols for 8va, 8vb, 15ma and 15mb can be used together with the alto clef. Other clefs are not being used. As all notes have their constant position in a staff, the clef is more an indicator of the given octave.  Examples of connected staves and use of clefs:

Notes & Rests Duration

The rhythm indication differs from traditional notation because of filled and hollow noteheads referring to pitch instead of the lenght of a note. The rests can be placed anywhere in the staff and whole / half rests are no more associated with their position (above or below the line). The half, whole and double-whole rests, however, should not touch the lines (to prevent confusion with notes). A simple dash (half rest) can be used to indicate silence in whole (empty) measure regardless the time signature. Notes & rests lenghts in the lyre notation with their equivalents in traditional standard notation are shown below:

Intervals

The look of the intervals is consistent and remains the same in any key. The intervals in chromatic notation also reflect real musical proportions. In the chart below, all the intervals up to octave are shown. They are split in two halves, according to two whole-tone scales on the lyre.

Scales

The structure of scales in chromatic lyre notation can be easily recognized at first sight by different notehead colours (whole step = same notehead, half step = different notehead). This also serves as a fingering scheme since the change of the notehead colour also means the swap of hands (hollow = right, filled = left). Same as with intervals, the look of a particular scale (as well as the fingering) remains consistent in any key. Ofcourse, the notation is not determined by diatonic keys so any types of scales can be written while maintaining a simple look. As an example, all major and minor scales are shown. They are ordered according to the crircle of fifths showing the spelling of sharp and flat notes in each key by sloping noteheads (sharp and flat keys are separated by double barlines).

Examples

1. I.   Folk tune - Spala bych, spala (Czech lullaby)
   

2. II.   Luis de Milán - Pavana VI.
   

3. III.  Adam Michna z Otradovic - Vánoční noc (“Christmas Night”)
   

4. IV.  J. S. Bach - Prelude in C major
   

5. V.   Léon Boëllmann - Prière à Notre-Dame

Manuscript Papers

Blank manuscript papers for lyre notation can be downloaded here. They come in different sizes - the numbers in file names represent the number of octaves (the double-lines) per page. There are two versions for each size - “blank” means that there is an empty space between each two double-lines and “dashed” version contains additional light grey dashed leger line that is barely perceptible when the staff contains notes but helps to maintain nice graphical proportions when writing them. The manuscript papers are in A4 format but can be scaled to any other paper size as well. And ofcourse, they can be used with any notation system that uses the same structure of staves.

The lyre notation system for modern “whole-tone” chromatic lyres was developed by Jan Braunstein. Athough it was meant to be used for notating music for lyres, its use is not limited to lyres only and can serve for general purpose of notating music. The major benfits of the system are not instrument-specific. It is also not meant to be a replacement of the traditional notation (although it possibly could be) but rather a viable alternative that can make old things easier and new things possible... It is a challenge for freeing the mind from learned patterns, escaping boundaries of tonality and exploring new ways of musical thinking.

Many variations of chromatic notation exist today, some of them improving constantly. Similar notation systems that use chromatic staff with two lines per octave were also invented and are being used by others, like Johannes Beyreuther, George Skapski, Paul Morris, Leo de Vries, Thomas Reed, Doug Keislar or José A. Sotorrío for instance. The Lyre Notation was developed independently but the further study of other notation proposals certainly helped to consider its benefits and possible inconveniences. More informations about alternative notation systems including other similar variations can be found on The Music Notation Project website.

Enharmonics, Sharps & Flats

The main difference of chromatic lyre notation towards traditional music notation is that it uses 12 particular note positions instead of just 7. Therefore, there is no need to use any accidental signs for raising or lowering the notes. However, those 12 notes can actually have many different spellings. A note on one particular position can be for instance F, E# or Gbb. Although the tone is played on the same string, the spelling is different acording to the key signature and music progression. In Chromatic Lyre Notation there are two possibilities how to handle this. The first one is really simple - the spelling is not speciified. This does not mean that the information is lost but it requires a knowledge of diatonic functions in order to name the notes correctly. However, this is not essential for playing them in tune on a lyre where 12 tones in the notation exactly corresponds to just 12 strings in one octave (regardless the spelling). The second option is using of slanted noteheads in order to distinguish sharps, flats and naturals. The noteheads of sharp notes are rised from left to right, flats are lowered and all natural notes remain unslanted. The notehead angle does not directly indicate whether it is a flat, sharp, or natural in traditional notation, but instead whether it is a lowered, raised or unaltered version of some pitch. For example, on the single ledger line, which is usually thought of as C, a notehead angled downward is not a flat, but a double flat (namely, Dbb). There can be no flat at that particular staff position, so the downward angle here unambiguously indicates a double flat. Similarly, an upward angle at that staff position unambiguously indicates a sharp (B#), because there can be no double sharp at that position. A non-tilted notehead does not necessarily mean a natural.  For example, a non-tilted notehead at the staff position for C#/Db cannot indicate a natural; it just means that the spelling has not been specified. See the notation examples no. II., IV. and V. where this system is employed.