Journey Through Music History: Ancient to Renaissance
Music in Ancient Greece
Music held immense importance in ancient Greek civilization, embodying beauty, harmony, and order. Appreciated for its intrinsic value rather than religious or social function, music was integral to all celebrations and public events, particularly classical tragedy, where it intertwined with poetry and dance. Mathematical formulas were employed to achieve the desired harmony and order.
Music in the Middle Ages (5th-14th Centuries)
With the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity, cultural life shifted to monasteries, where monks preserved and advanced music. Musical development centered around monasteries and abbeys, leading to significant advancements in musical notation. Simultaneously, minstrels and troubadours emerged among the nobility, cultivating music through songs and ballads.
Religious Music
The Christian church discouraged music for entertainment, promoting it instead as a tool for prayer. This led to the development of Gregorian chant, the official song of the Catholic Church.
Characteristics of Gregorian Chant:
- Latin text
- Exclusively vocal (a cappella)
- Sung by men
- Religious purpose
- Monodic (single sound)
- Anonymous
Medieval Secular Music
Despite the Church’s disapproval of non-religious music, popular songs and dances thrived among the common people, spread by minstrels who offered entertainment through games, acrobatics, trained animals, and diverse musical performances.
Music Writing
Monks, being among the few literate, documented music. Early Gregorian chant notation used pneuma, curved signs above each syllable. Guido d’Arezzo, a monk, revolutionized music education by naming the notes (ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la) from a hymn to St. John and using letters (s, f, g) to indicate the keys of do, fa, and sol.
Ars Antiqua
This school saw the birth of polyphony, mirroring the soaring heights of Gothic cathedrals. Leonin and Perotin (not Pinot Girande) were key figures in this development.
Ars Nova
is characterized by greater freedom, fluidity and expression of the melody to whether the current approach as a compass. Composers began to be valued.
The Renaissance: historical and sociocultural aspects: This period is located between the S.15 and s.16. The very word”renaissance”and indicates the interest among this age to learn the classical culture of Greece and Rome and to regain her ideals of harmony, balance and proportion that is reflected in all the arts.
– On the cultural level: three events occur that mark this period, geographical discoveries, the configuration of states, the invention of printing.
– On the social level: the medieval Christian conception where God is the center of the universe, is modified and a new trend emerges, humanism, defending the idea that man is the center of the universe and the measure of all things.
– In musical terms: It is cultivated among the educated, to be disadvantaged in Greek music which can inspire.
The musician in the rebirth arise at this time of great patrons, nobles and clerics from the rich and powerful families, who become sponsors and patrons of the arts, music is cultivated mainly in the church and palace, used mainly in the official events and religious ceremonies. The musician started singing in a choir, if you have good skills as an organist and composer just becoming choirmaster at a church or in a court in the palace where she receives a higher or lower wages. Its duties are to compose at least a week or works for a given conclusion also necessarily accompany their masters on their travels.