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MUSIC BEFORE 1600 - Chap18
MUSIC BEFORE 1600 - Chap18
Chapter 18
MUSIC BEFORE 1600
The origins of music are shrouded in mystery.
Scholars can only speculate regarding its
beginnings, but recent research has expanded our
knowledge of early music and pushed back the
date for the earliest evidence of music.
No one has been able to establish precisely when, where,
why, or how music originated
The word music was originally an adjective derived from
Muse, a Greek term denoting any one of nine goddesses
who collectively presided over song and prompted the
memory and who individually governed a particular realm
of literature, art, or science.
(Source: The Development of Western Music A History by K Marie Stolba)
THE EARLIEST MUSIC
Soviet archaeologists report that they have
unearthed musical instruments made from
mammoth bones twenty thousand years ago.
The instruments found near Chernigov in Ukraine
There are startling similarities between the Babylonian principles of music theory
and those used by ancient Greeks. Moreover, the Babylonian principles antedate
the Greek ones by more than a millenium.
The Babylonians seem to have used music exclusively in connection with religious
observances and festivals. The names of lyra/kithara strings and musical pitches
were related to their cult deities and to the planets in a cosmology similar to
Greek philosophers' "harmony of the spheres."
GREEK MUSIC
Music was included in the quadrivium of liberal
arts, along with arithmetic, geometry, astronomy.
Kithara
Lyre
EPITAPH OF SEIKILOS
Is the earliest and perhaps the only piece of
Greek music preserved complete and intact. It
was engraved in the tombstone of Seikilos wife
some time between the second century B.C. And
the first century A.D. At Tralles in Asia Minor.
MESOMEDES: HYMN TO THE SUN
(A.D 130)
The Hymn to the Sun, ascribed to Mesomedes of
Crete, is grouped with the examples of Greek
music in histories and anthologies, but its
authenticity and dating have been questioned.
The earliest known ancestor of keyboard
instruments is the hydraulos, a hydraulic organ
invented by Ktesibos of Alexandria ca. 300-250
B.C.,
Water pumped by hand produced the air pressure
to activate the organs nineteen pipes.
Cicero (Rome, 106-43 B.C) wrote regarding the
use of the hydraulos at banquets and described
the sound as delectable to the ears
The hydraulos, perhaps a louder version, was
also played at outdoor Roman spectacles such as
the exhibitions of gladiators.
ROMAN MUSIC
The Romans are credited with the development of
brass instruments and the cultivation of music
independent from poetry and drama.
In theatres and homes of rich citizens music was
performed by slaves, but virtuoso performers
were highly regarded and richly rewarded for
winning competitions.
EARLY SACRED MUSIC
Music in the early Christian era was concerned
principally with the development of the sacred
monody of the Catholic liturgy.
Between roughly A.D. 200 and 1300 a supreme
body of unaccompanied vocal music was
collected under the patronage of the Church. It
is known variously as plainsong, plainchant,
Gregorian chant, or by its Latin name cantus
planus.
GREGORIAN CHANT: ALLELUIA
VIDIMUS STELLAM
By the 9th century, a second part was sometimes
added to a Gregorian melody in a type of
polyphonic music called organum. In its most
archaic form the added part moved parallel with
original at the interval of fourth or fifth
throughout, with both parts often doubled at
the octave.
Types of Organum:
Parallelorganum strict parallelism is maintained
during the middle of the phrase but not at the
beginning or end
Free organum - with rhythmic independence and
greater variety of intervals between the voices.
Melismatic organum free flowing line added to the
chant melody in long sustained notes
Rex Caeli Domine
(parallel organum)