Uncovered 9th-century manuscript could contain earliest Western music notation

4 November 2025, 13:03 | Updated: 4 November 2025, 13:16

The findings were in a private collection in Pennsylvania.

Historians have uncovered what could be some of the earliest musical notation in Western history.

The ninth-century manuscript was found in a private collection in Pennsylvania and contains hand-written neumes, primitive music signs used before the development of the modern stave, to accompany liturgical texts during mass.​

It seems likely that these neumes would guide singers in the pitch and phrasing of sacred chants, using mnemonic symbols rather than definite pitches.

The discovery was made by historian Nathan Raab, president of the Raab Collection, who identified the notation while evaluating the manuscript.

He noticed penstrokes and dots above the word Alleluja in a choral refrain that had been ignored or misunderstood by previous owners, undertaking months of research into their origin and use.

Read more: French Benedictine nuns release 7,000 hours of Gregorian chant

Nuns at enclosed monastery perform a spirited viral dance ‘to cheer people up’

These early neumatic symbols predate the widely recognised stave system introduced by Guido of Arezzo in the 11th century, which laid the foundation for the system we use now.​

Other early surviving examples of Western musical notation have been found in The Laon Gradual at the Laon Bibliothèque municipale in France and in the St Gall Cantatorium at Stiftsbibliothek St Gallen in Switzerland.

Read more: How did music notation begin?

“This is an incredibly early witness to our modern use of musical notations at its very dawn, and its discovery is a further reminder to us in the business of historical discovery that sometimes those discoveries are hiding in plain sight,” said Raab on the Raab Collection website.

He estimates the document’s worth at around $80,000.