The History of Music - 1

This multi-part series will attempt to generally discuss music history, overall music theory, composers, performers, and instruments reigning from 1012 B.C Through 2009 A.D.

Essentially music history is broken up into categories and subcatagories known as periods.

Antiquity

the 1st period is called Antiquity and generally spans 1012 B.C. through 313 A.D.

World Events: Reign of King David, First Recorded Olympic competitions 776 B.C

Music and Musicians: First notated music 800 B.C., Greater Perfect System 4th Century B.C.

Figures in the Arts and Humanities: Homer 700 B.C., Pythagoras 500 B.C., Aeschylus 456 B.C., Sophocles 400 B.C., Plato 340 B.C., Artistotle 322 B.C., Jesus.

For the most part little is known about the entirety of music prior to the 1300's. Therefore this series will begin around that time period. In the meantime however I will bore you with the information available prior to music's real beginning.

In essence we know about the Doctrine of Ethos and how music can affect human character. Plato thought of music as education and Aristotle thought of music as art. There was some music theory we knew called tetrochords and tonoi. Tetrachords was a span of two octaves with a series of intervals based around the fourth. Tonoi was an order of pitches that eventually led to the greater perfect system which was the development of two octaves of tones - essentially invented by Pythagoras.

Before 313 B.C., music was basically passed down by story telling and education but little written music was around basically because notation wasn't invented yet. The Edict of Milan (313 B.C.) when Constantine and Licinicus granted freedom from Christianity dictated the beginning of cataloging music in written forms however not in the form of the notation we read today.

It was not until 480 B.C. when Boethius wrote a doctrine known as De Institutione Musica that we have written forms of how music was perceived, taught, played, and cataloged.

And it was not until Pope Gregory 590-604 A.D. developed the first school that musicians could read and sing together by using a codified system of notes.

Charlemagne 742-814 A.D. along with Thomas of Celeano cataloged Pope Gregory's Schola Cantorum's writings and established the first body of church music and classified it as the following: (Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Trinity, Advent, Divine Office, Rule of Benedict, Matins, Lauds, Vespers, Compline, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Antiphony, Mass, Eucharist, Ordinary, Proper, Requiem, Dies Irae, Recitation Tones, Psalm Tones, Melismas, Church Modes, Authentic, Plagal, Modes, and Nuemes. Yes, he was a busy fellow.

Guido of Arezzo: 1000 A.D. by means of Guidonian hand standardized the 4 line staff, sight singing, and the additional solfege; ut, re, mi, fa, sol, and the ever popular la.

As music grew through between 1000 and 1300 a plethora of scholars, religious figures, and composers developed more modernized theories but from this point I would like to discuss the two most defining moments in history during the 1300's - The Great Schism and The Black Plague - next time on The History of Music

Later,

John