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A VOYAGE INTO ANTIQUITY UPON THE WINGS OF SONG Spring 1984 Written by Otto Krumbach The sailors listen in wonder. They beach their dugout canoe. What strange and glorious sounds are these? They walk slowly along a well-trod path to a small village where fellow Cro-Magnon people are busy about their daily tasks. A smiling boy responds to their queries and takes them to a clearing. There they see a young man perched upon a log oblivious to the world around, industriously breathing upon a strange object which makes the delightful sounds! It is twenty thousand years into the dim past. Tbe first music produced by man is being played somewhere in France. The small instrument is a bird bone flute with two arms, each of which is pierced by three holes. The sounds which flow from this extraordinary object are not accidental tones but are somewhat harmonic sounds! It will not be until far into the distant future that instruments of this type, saved by some miracle of nature, will be discovered by "modern" people. They will be played with little expectation of pleasing results. To the astonishment of the musicians, the ancient flutes will provide rich and melodious music! Some of the excitement of these discoveries may be felt by all scholars engaged in musical research as they probe the past to bear the music of their talented ancestors. For reasons which may not yet be clearly understood, their probings often turn toward the musical expressions of their own ancient forebears. It may be that only part of the appeal of many early European musical efforts lies in their antiquity or in the quaintness of the sounds. It is exciting to discover that the tones of ancient instruments may be able to reach deep within even modern people to evoke feelings much the same as those which arose within the breasts of early listeners. But much more can be learned on this voyage of exploration into the past. Careful observations reveal the Greek Pythagoreans in the sixth century before Christ discover the stability and ratios of the diatonic scale, revealing the tones, intervals and harmonies of a major or minor scale without chromatic alteration. Other early Greeks go far beyond the delights of musical sounds alone as they assign specific mental and emotional states to pitch arrangements and instrumental combinations. Plato and Aristotle believe music has a direct effect upon the soul as well is upon the actions of mankind. St. Ambrose arranges the Ambrosian tones of church music in the year 384 and also composes beautiful hymns. The church is now the principal support base for musical creation in Europe and the mainstream of music is the vocal chant. Pope Gregory I, in the sixth century, organizes and codifies traditional melodies. Guido of Arezzo, a Benedictine Monk of Italy, is a musical theorist who lays a permanent foundation for musical notation in the eleventh century when he creates a new series of notes. He calls them do, re, mi, fa, so, la and ti. The new standardization of notation speeds musical creativity all over Europe. Polyphonic music develops in complexity in Europe, even as new and more expressive instruments are devised. The establishment of contrapuntal music by the sixteenth century merges the three dimensions of music, melody, rhythm, and harmony, into their simplest state of balance. It ts called by many, "the golden age of music." In a spectacular burst of musical creativity, the seventeenth century Baroque era brings a renaissance of musical texture, and new vocal techniques are developed which will lead to soaring arias in operas. The sonata and concerto epoch begins in the eighteenth century with Bach and Handel. Hadyn and Mozart advance the form of symphonic expression while Beethovan shows how gigantic the range and scale of the sonata can be. In the nineteenth century Wagner and Liszt use new harmonic resources in their creations while Brahms carries on the tradition of true classical methods of sonata forms. Verdi an Italy writes music for operas which will not be surpassed. The twentieth century dawns to the strains of European music which has developed into a complete art form in its own right and become world music. Elsewhere, music yet remains only an adjunct of ceremony or dance. It may not be an aimless search which motivates people of European origin who listen so intently to the sounds of folk, country, blue grass, or the full range of classical music. As literature relates the thoughts of others, music reveals the deepest feelings of predecessors who have bequeathed their melodic expressions for others to experience. A careful listener may bridge space and roll back the passage of time as he becomes one with those who have preceded him in the voyage of life. |
