Concise History of Western Music

Fourth Edition

Part I

The Ancient and Medieval Worlds By Barbara Russano Hanning Based on J. Peter Burkholder, Donald J. Grout, and Claude V. Palisca,

A History of Western Music

, Eighth Edition © 2010, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

THE ANCIENT WORLD

Vocal Music

• • Singing has been a natural outlet for expression since the beginning of human existence.

When combined with language, music becomes a powerful tool for expression.

Vocal Music

• • Vocal music dominated music history from Antiquity through the Renaissance.

Most of the surviving written music of this period is vocal, although there is evidence of instrumental music as well.

Vocal Music

• • Both the ancient Greeks and the early Christians placed a higher value on vocal music than on instrumental music.

In sixteenth–century Italy, some believed the art of singing was the link that connected us to the entire cosmos.

Mesopotamia and Egypt

Mesopotamia and Egypt

• • Most of our ideas about music from these regions are conjectures, as little historical evidence has survived.

Evidence indicates that both vocal and instrumental music existed in the fourth millennium B .

C .

E .

Mesopotamia and Egypt

• • Instruments: lyres, harps, lutes, pipes, drums, cymbals, rattles, and bells.

Reconstruction of a Sumerian bull lyre from the royal tombs at Ur, ca. 2500 B.C.E.

Mesopotamia and Egypt

• Inlaid panel from Ur showing a bull lyre being played at a victory banquet, ca. 2600 B .

C .

E .

Mesopotamia and Egypt

• Types of music, like those today, included wedding songs, funeral dirges, military marches, tavern songs, and ceremonial music.

Music in Babylonia

• • • Babylonian musicians used seven-note scales.

They created the first known notation during the second millennium B .

C .

E .

Most music was probably improvised or played from memory.

Ancient Greece

• • • Music was seen to have special powers, as suggested in the myth of Orpheus.

Music could heal the body and soul.

Plato recommended that the state be founded on suitable types of music.

Fourteenth century

Fourteenth century

• Numerous important writers and artists appeared.

– Petrarch wrote lyrics that inspired composers for centuries.

– Boccaccio wrote Decameron: travelers escaping from the plague.

– Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales: pilgrims going to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket.

– Sculptor Giovanni Pisano and painter Giotto anticipated the Renaissance in their works

Giotto, The Nativity, detail, ca. 1305

Musical trends

• • • • Preoccupation with structure and form in certain genres Songs of courtly love were extended into polyphonic settings.

Elaborate textures and complicated rhythms characterized music at the end of the fourteenth century.

Polyphonic church music flourished in cathedrals and private chapels.

Andrea Orcagna (?), The Dream of Life, fresco, mid-fourteenth century

This concludes the presentation slides for Part I: The Ancient and Medieval Worlds For more, visit our online StudySpace at: http://www.wwnorton.com/college/music/concise-history-western-music4/