Photograph of Aimé Paris by Etienne Carjat (Bibliothèque nationale de France).
Photograph of Aimé Paris by Etienne Carjat (Bibliothèque nationale de France).
Notation Chevé, Orphéon « la Cigale toulousaine », c. 1900, collection B. Fourtet
Notation Chevé, Orphéon « la Cigale toulousaine », c. 1900, collection B. Fourtet
Detail map of Gent, Vlaanderen, Belgium Overview map of Gent, Vlaanderen, Belgium

A: Gent, Vlaanderen, Belgium

Elegant Souvenir Certificate of a Class in the Galin-Paris-Chevé Music Notation, Descended from Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Circa 1850
Finely lithographed certificate printed by G. Jacqmain in Ghent. The New musical notation is illustrated in relatively small form on the open book above Galin's name.
Creative Commons LicenseJeremy Norman Collection of Images - Creative Commons
Finely lithographed certificate printed by G. Jacqmain in Ghent. The New musical notation is illustrated in relatively small form on the open book above Galin's name.
This certificate of a class in Music notation taught by Aimé Paris was beautifully printed on "porcelain" coated paper by C. Jacqmain, Gand (Ghent) Belgium.

The Galin-Paris-Chevé method is a method of reading music developed by Nanine Paris (1800-1868), her brother Aimé Paris (1798-1866), her husband Émile Chevé (1804-1864) and Pierre Galin (1786- 1821), one of the founders of the method. The system originated in the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Rousseau wanted to simplify music notation, believing that the traditional system was too complex. He was only interested in the method of writing down, transmitting and preserving music.  Rousseau focused on on the expression of all possible sounds and all different durations, both sounds and their relative silences. He started from a fundamental sound, C (in other words Do), expressed by the number 1; then the seven natural sounds of the tempered keyboard (ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si) by the seven digits 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

To express a change of octave, he used a point above the note to signify the octave immediately above. The placement of this point also indicates that the following notes belong to this octave until the next sign. For the octave immediately below the note considered, the point is placed below. The number of points designates the number of octaves raised or lowered.

The system has been mostly forgotten in the west, but remains widely used in China under the name Jianpu .

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