Antiquity, Middle Ages, Renaissance - MUS 201 - Exploring Music: Introduction to Music History

Antiquity: Music in Ancient Greece and Early Christian Rome (Ancient Mediterranean Culture)

Music in Antiquity: The Near East & the Mediterranean
Music was one component of the cultural continuum that developed in the contiguous civilizations of the ancient Near East and of Greece and Rome. This book covers the range and gamut of this symbiosis, as well as scrutinizes archeological findings, texts, and iconographical materials in specific geographical areas along this continuum.
The Music of the Time NO 10: The Lost Classics
Though originally set to music, we almost always encounter the Ancient Greek epics as mute texts. But now their songs can be heard again.
Greek Music
Reference: the music of the ancient and modern inhabitants of Greece.
The West Finds Its Voice
links between Western musical tradition and early Christian worship and music. Music among Christians in the late Roman Empire.
Concerning Hymns
Various forms of Christian hymns, including the earliest Christian hymn, hymns in Easter rites, and the first metrical hymns.

Musical Thought and Practice in the Early Christian Church

Cantor
The office of cantor, at first an honorary one, originated in the Jewish synagogues, in which from early times it was the custom to appoint a lay member to represent the congregation in prayer.
The Sacred
Observations on the changes in Catholic life and practice, how art may fail to bring man to God, and the true work of art according to Pope Pius XII. Author also mentions the reason why the early church was wary of art and things that people should do to come to God and to holiness.

The Middle Ages and Renaissance:

Important Composers and Figures

Charlemagne (progressive monarch 742-814), contributions to education, etc.
- Notker Balbulur: Notker's life of Charlemagne preserves much of the matter of the Charlemagne legend.
Leonin and Perotin from the Notre Dame School
- Motet: name for the outstanding type of musical composition of the 13th century and for a different type that originated in the Renaissance.
Hildegard of Bingen
- Keeping Score: profile of composer Hildegard von Bingen
Guillaume de Machaut
- Fortune's Child:
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
- Palestrina's Sicut Cervus: A Motet Upon a Parallelismus Membrorum: Topics discussed include his reputation as one of the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition, his influence on the development of church music, and the popularity of his motet "Sicut cervus."
Claudio Monteverdi
- Sixth Heaven: Reviews a compact disc featuring Claudio Monteverdi's choral music titled `Il Sesto Libro de Madrigali,' performed by the Concerto Italiano under the baton of Rinaldo Alessandrini.

Topics

Life and Culture during the Middle Ages
- Music of the Renaissance: Imagination & Reality of a Cultural Practice: Where previous accounts of the Renaissance have not fully acknowledged the role that music played in this decisive period of cultural history, Laurenz Lütteken merges historical music analysis with the analysis of the other arts to provide a richer context for the emergence and evolution of creative cultures across civilizations.
- Harmony: Sounding Music Bring the Soul into Harmony: It mentions that polyphony has its real impact as the harmonious ordering of independent voices in imitative polyphony.
- The Original Do, Re, Mi: The article discusses the real author of Do Re Mi popularized by Julie Andrews in England.
Historical and Cultural Events during the Middle Ages and Renaissance
Musical Notation: Origin and Development (Guido de'Arezzo)
- Musings: Two Sides of Music Notation: an outline of music history, an overview of the medieval music mutation, the development of methods for pitch and rhythm notation, the interpretation of music, the intact origins of popular music improvisation, and the development of modern sound recording techniques.
Troubadours and Trouvéres
- The Songs of Thibaut de Champagne (1201-1253): An essay is presented on the songs of troubadour and Count of Champagne Thibaut IV.
Life and Music in the Medieval Monastery
- Soul Music: the Gregorian chant.
The Crusades and The Musical Instruments They Brought to Europe from Middle East
- The Music War: association of music with warfare. Function of music in war; Type of musical instruments used by Greek and Roman armies; Significance of music during the Middle Ages.
Humanism
- Haydn's Creation as Late Style: parataxis, pastoral, and the retreat from Humanism.

Genre

Plainchant, sometimes called Christian Plainchant or Medieval Chant
- Plainsong: unharmonized chant of the medieval Christian liturgies in Europe and the Middle East; usually synonymous with Gregorian chant, the liturgical music of the Roman Catholic Church.
Gregorian Chant
- Chants Encounters: the emergence of the influence of chant which was used before to pray, the history of Gregorian works for organ, and information about the grandfather of late 20th-century chant who is Gerald Near.
Organum and the Development of Polyphony
- Polyphony: music whose texture is formed by the interweaving of several melodic lines.
The Mass
- Musical Archaeologists: the rivival and reconstruction of polyponic settings of the Latin mass in Corsica.
Medieval and Renaissance Dance Music
- Under the Angle: memory, history, and dance in nineteenth-century Midievalism.