Ultimate Origin Of Music Essay, Research Paper
your gods, and from off your hands.
The ultimate origin of music is to locate in time to find out correctly. Music in its modern Western sense has become both a fine art and a fine discipline. Its prime constructive elements are melody, rhythm, and harmony. The music of primitive people and the culture of African, Amerindian, Asians are largely uninfluenced by European developments might lack harmony and maybe even melody as we know it, but it is not possible to make music devoid of rhythm. In Europe music, it is the fine art as we now recognize came during the Middle Ages. Music comes from the coming together and development of human expressive utterance. Vocal sound came later but being one spontaneous way of showing emotion and need, historians often assume, sometimes without proof, that primary music was made of some form of song. Moving the body is another way of expressing response to emotion response, a rhythmic form of sound set to go with dance or mime. Some Amerindians burst into shouts and wail which settle into musical intervals. Most of the earliest known instruments were clapping, rattles, stamping tubes, and later drums and xylophones are really extensions or projections of the movements of human limbs. The importance of rhythm and melody differ from the
different cultures. Rhythm plays and inferior role among some people, but it is dominate to others. One of the clearest examples of such rhythmic dominance is the polyrhythmic beating of Central African drums. These complex patterns and off beats cannot be notated
exactly. Music is more closely connected with the daily living of primitive people than of those in ore highly developed cultures. It goes with an important place in tribal rites concerned with birth, puberty, marriage, fertility, heath, death, resurrection, rain, planting, hunting, and combat. Most important music element largely absent from primitive music, is harmony as it has evolved in Western music since the Renaissance. The music of highly developed civilization of Asia and north Africa differs from primitive music. The profession frequently is handed down to generations in Bachlike musical dynasties in many areas, specialized schools gave thorough music education and training. The Bible illustrates the musical difference between the primitive and the more civilized stages. In the books of Judges and others, man and women of the people sing or play upon lyres(harps) and drums at celebrations. Like when Saul required music, he send for a David, a shephard to play for him on his lyre as I Samuel 16:23 says ?And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took an harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.? Levites are now selected to dedicate themselves to performing music in the temple. When the house of the Lord is finished, its servants include 288 music students in 24 grades ?under the hands of their fathers.? The music of the ancient Orient has not lasted, but the Orthodox Eastern Synagogues and other far Eastern places of worship has probably preserves some of it form and history. Much of the folf singing in Asia and North Africa has changed little during two or three millenia. Otherwise we must rely on archaeology for information on the lost ancient music. Our sources of information are slighty richer in India, China, and Japan, where old nations and religions have survived, than in the Western Orient, where christianity and Islam put an end to the ancient civilizations. Oriental music is richest and more sophisticated in India and Pakistan. Indian melody never is entirely free; invention moves within limitations of pointed out patterns(ragas) in which a mood is related to a certain scale. In India, like the rest of the Orient, music is strongly influenced by extra musical concepts. Not only scales and melodic patterns, but even single tones, stands for the cardinal point of direction. A noted recent development in the Orient, especially in Japan and India, has been the rapidly increasing accepting of performances of Western music: Instruments, vocal, and jazz. As a result many highly trained Orients have become expert performers and composers of music in several Western styles. Despite the unmistable style connection between music of the Arabic speaking people and that of India, Arabic theory writing has depended greatly o the texts of ancient Greece. The activities of music practicing, the Greeks built a bridge connecting East and West, Rome and the Middle Ages. The Greeks acknowledge the Orient origins of their music, they even huted that none of their instruments bore a Hellenic name. Rhythm usually was not strongly marked because of the melodies paralleled the sung text. Music followed text in being dacylic, trochaic, or ana paestic. Even in the rare examples shows five beats to one short syllable and two long syllables. Like Orientals, the Greek used an impressive number of modes or scales. The oldest of the Greek modes called encharmonic, consisted of undivided major third and semitones. The melodies modeled upon these modes were interrelated with extra musical concepts in the Oriental manner. Rome, which borrowed Greek music and its theories, did little to change them, but passed them on, in both practices and commentaries, to the Middle Ages. Rome being the center of Christianity also became the center of its musical liturgy. It is written long after the death of St.Ambrose had regulated Christian liturgical music. The widespread picture of the early midieval music was almost exclusively sacred is not complete. Most of the people who could write were monks, who ignored the popular music outside church. Monks only wrote sacred music and they discussed them. Music of Roman Church was purely vocal at first, they were sung by priests, a unison choir, and soloists. There is very little about the secular music of the early Middle Ages. Toward the end of the eleventh century, a courtly style of poetry began to expand and be set to music. The important courtly poetry music last from 1100AD to 1450. The fourteenth century, period of the ?ars nova,? end of the Middle Ages. Like most terminal eras, this was mainly rich in musical evolution. The leader form of music for vocal soloists were originated from dance songs, as theis names show: rondeau and ballade are related to ?round? and ?ball?. Early in the fifteenth century, the center of musical gravity moved northward from Italy(Encyclopedia Americana 1971).
Music has played an important role in the activities of all people. It goes with the progress of the athletic and military arts. It has been a friend to religious ceremonies. Music for voices and instruments has taken many forms. A very important one is the art song, for single voices and piano, a form that came popular in the nineteenth century. Choirs, or groups of singers split between men and women and between high and low voices and these voices are: soprano, alto, tenors, baritone, and bass are needed to form a
choral literature. The most highly organized type of instrumental music is the symphony, a orchestral piece that might be from twenty minutes to more than a hour. Tone is the most fundamental element of music. A type of tone is the psychophysical phenomenon called sound. Sound is a result from vibrations in the atmosphere. A tone has four characteristics. It could be higher or lower in pitch than another tone, with the higher tones having a faster rate of vibration. A melody is a meaningful series of tones that has emotional significance. Melodies differ from one another in contour, organization, and cadence. A pitch range is a step-like arrangement. Some others might be wide ranging and include large leaps in pitch. The material surrounding a melody gives it its texture. A melody that is heard alone is said to have a monophonic texture. When it is accompanied or supported by a set a chords, it has a nomophonic texture. If two or more independent melodies are heard together, the result is contrapuntal texture or just counter point. Rhythm is a principle by which we organize perception of time and space. The unit of time in music is called a beat, which must recur often enough to be considered a series. In music, successive accents give rise to the concept of meter. Accents might differ in spacing and strength. Much music exhibits groupings of beats into three?s. Accented beats do not need to appear in regular succession. A musical scale, known as the diatomic scale, results when eight tone are arranged in order according to a certain formula of halfs and whole steps. The scale steps themselves are usually called degrees. A particular scale formula-major or minor may be constructed on any of the twelve halftones within a octave. Therefore, Western music commonly uses twelve major and twelve minor scales as well as other scales based and different formulas. Harmony is defined as the affect of
tones heard in combination. The harmony measurement is the interval between two pitches. Chord is the unit of harmony which consists of three or more tones vertically spaced a third apart. There is different ways to copy chord, like inverting them, altering
their notes, and adding or subtracting tones. A chord may be inverted by putting one or two of the upper tones below to the core of the chord. Aesthetic experience has determined that certain chords are more stable than others. A cadence in a harmonic sense is essentially a set of two or more dissonant chords followed by a more consonant one. A composition is based on a particular scale and employs the chord established on that scale. Through a process called modulation, this is a replication to other scales and chords take place, but the composition generally starts and finishes in its basic key. The vast majority of Western music is based on five organizing principles, resulting in music that has coherence, satisfying proportions, and both unity and variety. The main result in music that has coherence, is that the satisfying proportions, and both unity and variety, this has enabled musical theorists to discover certain patterns of manipulating the musical material to produce satisfying aestetics ends. This principles give rise to the concept of musical form, are repitition, contrast, symmetry, variation, and development, to which may be added a hierarchical plan which small units are put together in a increasingly larger unit. The unit of music form is the phrase, which itself may include or be composed of short fragments called motives. Under the influence of the above organizing in various ways. The resulting small forms similarly may be combined through the same principles to form parts or selections, which, in turn, are combined to form a movement. A movement may be considered to be a short independent composition which is usually
five to fifteen minutes long. On a higher level of organization, movements are put together to form still larger compound forms, such as the sonata or the symphony. One of the most important types of movement forms through much of the late eighteenth and the
nineteenth centuries was the sonata-form. Movements other than the sonata- form include the minuet with true and replicated, are commonly, simply called minuet: a faster of the minuet, sometimes with humorous intent, called scherzo: a set of theme and variations: a symmetrical form called rondo. In instrumental music, the compound forms include the sonata with one or two instrument, consisting usually of three or four contrasting movements, the symphony, written for orchestras similar to the sonata but often longer and more elaborate; and the conerto, which is essentially a sonata for orchestras and a solo instrument.(Encyclopedia Americana, 1997.)
Composers of secular music also made great strides in the sixteenth century. The relationship between text and music was shown by ?word painting? in which certain textual details were ?illustrated? in the music. Similar songs, set mainly in contrapuntal style for four voices were composed in Germany. In the late Renaissance, instrumental music progressed far toward achieving independence from vocal music. Earlier, instrumental forms had been written largely in imitation of vocal music. In Italy, in the sixteenth century, canzoni based on vocal chansons but often included instrumental idioms, appeared for keyboard or lute and for groups of string or wind instruments. Set of dance tunes, arranged into suite for instrumental groups. The appreciation of music has two components emotional and intellectual: a person listen, reacts, and responds. A listener of music does not go beyond the sensory reaction provided by the listening
experience that is, if they confine the experience to the emotional component he makes contact only with the physical material of music. Only by being aware of the principles and perceiving them in action can the listener experience total enjoyment of both the emotional and intellectual components.
People use music in different ways. They use it to express their feelings, their thoughts, and their emotions. In this world there is Christian music and worldly music or secular music. There is different styles of music such as: rock, rap, jazz, etc. The Christian style is a style that worships Christ and the worldly style does not worship Christ.
Bibliography
Encyclopedia Americana. 575 Lexington Ave. New York, New York: 1971.
Encyclopedia Americana. Danbury, Connecticut 06816: 1997.
Ardly, Neil. Instrumental Music. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989.