The types and methods of notation have varied between cultures and throughout history, and much information about ancient music notation is fragmentary. The act of deciphering or reading a piece using musical notation, is known as ' reading music'. Musical notation is any system used to visually represent auditorily perceived music, played with instruments or sung by the human voice through the use of symbols, including notation for durations of absence of sound such as rests. This is the beginning of the Prelude from the Suite for Lute in G minor, BWV 995 (transcription of Cello Suite No. For the XML application, see Music Markup Language.
