MUS 201 - Exploring Music: Introduction to Music History

This program shows how all of that changed around the year 1030, when the choirmaster Guido of Arezzo came up with the simple device of a thin red line: a dot directly on it would always represent the note "F"; a dot above it, G; a dot below it, E; and so on. This system of Western musical notation paved the way for harmony—and composers.

From Pythagoras’s first scales and the advent of harmony to the standardization of all instruments to equal temperament, this program traces the evolution of the system of tuning that revolutionized Western music. Few musical cultures have escaped its influence, and without it, much of the world’s most beautiful music could not exist.

From the birth of opera in Florence with the Camerata to the genius of Monteverdi and beyond, this program looks at how opera grew into both a form of entertainment and a vehicle for delivering incisive social, political, and cultural messages. The operettas of Offenbach and of Gilbert and Sullivan are also considered, as is opera’s maturation into a worldwide phenomenon.

Since its invention in Florence three hundred years ago, the piano has become many things to many people—a bridge between the worlds of classical and popular music and the ultimate composer’s companion. This program traces the ancestry of the instrument and the history of those composers who championed its use. From the concert hall to nightclubs and living rooms, the piano has become the instrument of choice throughout the Western world.

In 1877 Thomas Edison invented the phonograph and the whole course of music was forever changed. From the jukeboxes of the 1880s to contemporary composers blending live and recorded music, this program examines the effects, both positive and negative, that resulted from the birth of the phonograph and the subsequent development of electronic and computerized music-making devices.

Instrumental music was also rapidly gaining in importance as was ballet, championed by Catherine de' Medici, Queen of France. From the violin, which dominated her dance bands, the orchestra would emerge

This period also saw the rise of instrumentalist suites and concertos, which created the basis for the classical forms to come. We also see the rise of opera during this period. Key composers from this period include Bach, Handel, Purcell, and Vivaldi.

and public concerts were becoming more popular. Music was considered abstract and pure, rather than depicting anything in particular, and instrumental music was more common than vocal forms. Symphonies, concertos, string quartets and sonatas ruled the day and works were not given titles, but merely called things like Piano Concerto No. 1 in C Major. Popular composers of this period include Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, and Beethoven.

This period is the beginning of the commercialization of music, where composers had to promote their own music through concerts, make deals with publishing houses, and compose music that had commercial value. Many composers were themselves skilled conductors and performers, who would tour their new works. Now celebrities, compositions begame longer and more elaborate, played by huge orchestras and choirs. The period is also characterized by the emergence of different 'schools' of music, from folk to impressionist. Composers of this period include Beethoven and Schubert, as well as Chopin, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Dvorak, Schumann, Bizet, Verdi, Wagner, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Bruckner, Mahler, Satie, Debussy, Mussorgsky, and Rachmaninoff.

Some composers continued to develop older traditions, while others shot off in vastly different directions, experimenting with atonal music, serialism, experimental and minimalist music. Some used traditional instruments in unconventional ways, overturning principles previously considered fundamental. During this period, popular music (which had been around for centuries) found a new mass audience with the advent of new media, and film music became a new genre. The advent of electrical instruments, amplifiers, and synthesizers, as well as the use of computers in creating and manipulating sound also had a huge effect on the development of new musical forms. Composers of this period include Strauss, Stravinsky, Bartok, Gershwin, Ravel, Schoenberg, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Cage, Glass, Bernstein, Britten, Copland, and Williams.

personal fortune in the artist’s brief life. A varied sampling of his many works includes Wilhelm Furtwängler conducting Don Giovanni; Karl Böhm conducting The Marriage of Figaro, The Magic Flute, and Requiem; Leonard Bernstein conducting Mozart’s choral motet Ave Verum (K618); Misuko Uchida performing Piano Concerto No. 9 (K271); François-Joël Thiollier performing Piano Concerto No. 14 (K449); and Ekaterina Novitzkaja performing Piano Sonata No. 9 (K310). Original title: Mozart: A Quest for Freedom.

In Bavaria, he marvels at the fairytale castle inspired by Wagner’s music, and in St Petersburg, he learns why Wagner fascinated Russian audiences. Fry also confronts the composer’s dark side. In Nuremberg, he investigates how Hitler appropriated Wagner’s music, and in London, he meets a cellist who played in the prisoners' orchestra at Auschwitz—where some of Fry's relatives died. What will she think of his passion for Hitler’s favorite artist? Animated by Fry’s trademark wit and intelligence, and featuring a soundtrack of Wagner's extraordinary music, this is a provocative and enjoyable exploration of the life and legacy of one of history’s great geniuses.