Where Does Musical Notation Come From?

Jimmy Carr says musical notation comes from Pope Gregory, who wanted every church to sing the same songs and ordered the music written down. People who never get inside the Comedy Store can learn comedy from a book that writes the structure down.

Pope Gregory traveled outside the Vatican and heard other churches singing the songs differently. He wanted the songs to be the same and ordered the music written down. A man refused, arguing that music cannot be written down, because if music does not live within a human soul it is ethereal. Pope Gregory insisted he was the pope and ordered it written down anyway. It took a couple of hundred years. Musical notation comes from that order. 300 years later came Bach, and there could not have been Bach without musical notation. A formal system did not make people the same or the music more rigid. It let people express themselves and do more. You have to know the rules before you can break the rules.

He never wants to sell a book that does not work or to be a grifter, so friends Abi Grant and Amanda Baker tested the course for six weeks with young comics at the Comedy Store. He calls that club the mothership, and there are not enough clubs like it. Music is not made any less wonderful by a formal structure. Writing comedy down gives the structure to people who cannot spend every day surrounded by other funny people.