From the Repertoire : Western Music History Through Performance
(transcript prepared by M. Brocato)
WEEK 1 A BRIEF HISTORY OF NOTATION
Lecture 1: INTROCUCTION
Welcome to From the Repertoire, Western Music History through Performance. I'm Jonathan
Coopersmith, Chair of Musical Studies at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And
I'm David Ludwig, Dean of Artistic Programs at Curtis and member of the composition faculty. Thanks for
joining us.
In this class, we'll be studying the history of Western music through the lens of some great pieces that
represent the eras in which they were written. This class is intended to be an introduction to this rich
history for the new listener, or an informative supplement to the study of music for students and
experienced listeners.
There are two goals for the course. The first is to understand a general survey of the development of
Western classical music through the ages. By better understanding each piece we cover, you should
arrive at the second and more important goal, which is to develop the skills and tools to research and
understand other pieces of music, on your own.
There are only seven classes in this course. But the skills you develop will lead to better ways of
approaching, and understanding any piece of music, new or familiar. Each week, we will survey a new
piece of music from a different era in music history, focusing on the historical context, composer,
background, and ultimately an analysis of the work, in order to learn much more about it than we would
simply by listening.
For a variety of reasons, the more you know about a piece, the circumstances under which it was
written, the more you can appreciate it, and the more you'll actually enjoy listening to it.
As a class participant, you'll be able to watch engaging performances of these pieces as recorded by
Curtis students, faculty, and alumni. In addition to watching the lecture and performance videos, each
week you'll be asked to post responses to provocative questions about the era and the music, and to
explore a piece more deeply through an assignment. You'll also have a chance to comment on and even
grade each other’s' post and assignments.
This first class goes all the way back to ancient music, and continues through the 1300s with a quick look
at today, too, as we explore the development of our notation system. So let's get started. Have fun, and
we hope you enjoy the course.
Part 2 Ancient Notation
In this first class, we're going to explore the time period from about 1500 BCE through the 1300s CE,
close to 3000 years. Understanding the developments of this time period is critical to understanding the
development of music. Not only does it cover music history from the Babylonians, music in
Mesopotamia and Ancient Greece, to about the Renaissance, but it also covers the development of our
musical notation, which actually changed the way music was conceived, composed, and ultimately the
way it sounded.
Map of the Holy Land (1657) Nicholas Visscher
Going back almost 4,000 years, almost no one was reading music as we know it today. In fact, music
itself was rarely written down. The Babylonians, who lived between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in
ancient Mesopotamia, which is now part of Iraq and Syria, created the names for intervals, scales,
tunings and even described the different genres of music that were popular at the time.
Using the names of intervals, they created a basic form of notation, but not enough is known about it
recreate how it might have sounded. We can see one of the earliest examples of this notation on clay
tablets showing cuneiform impressions.
Cuneiform means wedge-shaped, and it's one of the earliest forms of writing. Originally, the wedgeshaped impressions left by a reed or other blunt instrument approximated small pictures and symbols.
And over time, after many stages of development these symbols were slowly replaced by only a few
signs.
Since the clay is soft, writing could be erased, in a sense, or for a permanent record of the writing, the
clay could be fired in a kiln, like pottery today. And actually, many cuneiform records exist today
because, during war time attacking armies burned the buildings where they were kept and the fire
hardened the clay.
ANCIENT GREECE
There are many pictures of instruments from ancient Greek culture, of musicians playing and
performing. We see musicians with their teachers, instrumentalists and singers of different ages,
performing on different occasions, and rarely did they show someone reading from a tablet, or from any
other form of written notation.
Most musicians learned to play by ear through oral tradition, and performances were either memorized
or improvised. The Greeks developed a much more significant music theory, including theories of
intervals and systems of scales. There was also much written about the philosophy of music in society—
how music should be taught, even when certain scales or ranges should be used.
We often talk today about music's role in society, about how important it is for children to listen to
music, to study an instrument, and about the importance of music in our schools. It may surprise you
that these issues were being discussed in ancient Greece almost 2,500 years ago, and there were some
very strong opinions.
Plato was conservative and warned that we should be cautious of any fundamental changes in music.
This is from Plato's Republic, written around 380 BCE.
"The overseers must be watchful against its insensible corruption"—
and here Plato was talking about music, actually music and gymnastics. And continuing with the quote,
"For a change to a new type of music is something to beware of as a hazard of all our fortunes.
For the modes of music are never disturbed without unsettling of the most fundamental political
and social conventions."
Aristotle thought that everyone needed to study music, but only to become educated and develop
character, not to the point of becoming a professional. At that point, it became competitive, which was
bad for one's character.
This is from Aristotle's Politics, written around 350 BCE.
"Since as we have seen actual performance is needed to make a good critic, they should, while
young, do much playing and singing; and then when they are older, give up performing. They will
then, thanks to what they have learned in their youth, be able to enjoy music aright and give
good judgments. We reject then, as education, a training in material performance which is
professional and competitive. He that takes part in such performances does not do so in order to
improve his own character, but to give pleasure to listeners, a vulgar pleasure at that. We do not
therefore regard it as a proper occupation for a gentleman. It is rather that of a paid employee.
Inevitably, the consequences are degrading."
Fewer than 50 pieces, or parts of pieces, survive from the 5th century BCE to the 4th century CE. And
many of these pieces or musical fragments were discovered only recently. Here's an example of a
musical setting on a tombstone. It's short, but it's one of the earliest complete pieces, most likely from
the first century BCE, written by a man named Seikilos. It's a short verse, possibly dedicated to his wife,
and it shows the Greek text with letters on top representing the musical pitches, and symbols on top of
that showing the rhythm. Here, the Greek letters stand for notes.
In this case, c and z form the interval of a fifth, and in this transcription, that's an A to an E on the
modern staff. But the Greeks had different tones they could start on, which mean that this could be
transposed to a different starting note, but that interval would remain a perfect fifth.
You can see that k stands for the note C-sharp, which is a major third above our starting note, and so on.
As for the rhythm, with no lines or dots above the letter, which represents a musical pitch, the note
would get one beat. A line would mean double the value, or two beats, and a line with a dot means to
triple the value, or three beats. So from these symbols, Greek letters and some lines and dots above the
text, we can determine what the music might have sounded like.
The text translates to
"While you are living, be lighthearted;
have no grief,
life is only too short and time takes its toll."
[MUSIC] can be heard at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3ys7QyEVT4
This tombstone was discovered in 1883 in Turkey. According to one theory, the base of the tombstone
was ground down so that it would stand up straight and serve as a platform to hold flowers, and it
removed the bottom line of the notation of the text. It now resides in the National Museum of Denmark,
in Copenhagen.
So our earliest ancient references to music started out at as just descriptions, some in written
cuneiform, of when certain types of music would be played, with pictures that help us understand who
might be playing and how certain instruments might be played.
In ancient Greece, we notate music with letters, lines, and dots above the text. But soon, much of this
would be forgotten until the Renaissance, which marks a rebirth of Greek culture and knowledge,
almost a thousand years later.
Try to forget our modern system of notation for a minute. Put yourself back in a time when music was
transmitted from one generation to another orally, from one person to another.
What happens if nothing is written down?
Maybe you've heard of the children's game of telephone, where children sit in a line, or they sit in a
circle, and the first person comes up with a word or a phrase, and whispers it to the next person in line,
and they in turn whisper it to the person after that and so on until it reaches the last person. And by the
time it gets to the end, that person announces to everybody what they heard. And ... if you've played
this game, if you're familiar with this game, you can see how a word or a story can change in just a few
seconds as it's passed from one person to another.
So, what would happen to melodies—how would they be affected when they're passed from one
generation to another over hundreds of years? We'll explore that and what was done about it in the
next lecture. Okay, let's review with a simple quiz.
Quiz contents: We learn about the music of thousands of years ago through: (a) ancient writing about
music and musicians. (b) pictures of instruments and performers on pottery. (c) ancient musical
notation. (d) all of the above.
Correct answer: D all of the above
Part 3 Medieval Chant Notation
As Christianity spread throughout Europe in the 300s and 400s CE, singing psalms and hymns started to
become a regular part of services and worship in the Catholic Church. Text was regularly chanted or set
to simple melodies. Naturally, different chant traditions were developed in different churches
throughout Europe. And even chants that were intended to be the same in all Catholic churches ended
up with slight variations from church to church, as they were passed from one generation to another
over large areas.
Over time, the leaders of the church felt there was too much musical diversity and not enough unity, so
the church needed a way to standardize the chant melodies to prevent variations and corruption. It was
no longer enough to rely on memory and oral transmission. Neumes were the first step in solving this
problem.
Nuemes, which is Latin for gestures, are marks above the text that provide a reminder of the melodic
shape. By themselves, they don't even represent specific pitches, and there was no indication of rhythm.
The mark showed whether or not the melody went up or down, or stayed the same. Melodies still
needed to be taught and learned by ear, the specific melodies. But at least neumes provided a reminder
of the melodic shape.
In the 900s and 1000s CE, these neumes were placed at relative heights, which was a change. The
relative heights indicated interval size, which gave a little more information about the relative pitches.
In some manuscripts, the scribe would draw a line to indicate one specific note, like a reference line, and
the heightened neumes were then interpreted relative to that line. The line often represented the note
F or C, and these marks eventually evolve into our modern clefs, our F clef and C clef.
Using this system of heightened neumes, the melodic shape was more clear, but it was still not exact,
and there was still no indication of rhythm.
Guido of Arrezzo, a monk who lived from about 991 to about 1033 CE, came up with a system of four
lines and three spaces, using colored lines for F and C. Each line was labeled with the pitch it represents.
And, this system eventually gets expanded to our modern five-line staff, with four spaces.
Neumes were then fixed on a line or in a space, which, for the first time, specified an exact pitch. This
was revolutionary, because, as Guido said, this allowed a singer to learn a verse for himself, without
having heard it before. It marks a new direction and a new purpose for musical notation: sight reading.
Now that musical pitches could be written more exactly, there was still the problem of teaching
everyone how to sight read, and how to sight sing. To help with this, Guido created syllables for each
note of the system of commonly used modes and scales, starting with C. So we have C, D, E, F, G, and A.
He didn't name B right away. There were other reasons for that.
There just happened to be a hymn, a musical setting of a religious text, to Saint John the Baptist called
"Ut queant laxis," where each phrase of the text started on a different note in our scale. And they
happen to be in order from C to A. So he took the first syllable of each phrase and matched that syllable
with the note being sung.
So C gets the first syllable of text.
C becomes Ut.
D becomes re for the word "resonáre."
E becomes mi for "míra," and so on.
Eventually Ut gets changed to Do, probably for the word "Domine." And that's the beginning of our
solfège syllables today.
Guido and his disciples turned this simple note-naming idea into an entire system of reading music. They
made three different arrangements of six notes, called hexachords, one that started on C…another that
started on G, and another on F.
The hexachord that started on the note G required a B-natural which was shown as a square B, while the
hexachord that started on the note F required a B-flat, which was shown as a rounded B.
And the square B and the rounded B eventually evolved into our signs for natural, sharp, and flat.
In order to help teach Guido's system of hexachords, Guido students developed the Guidonian hand, to
help teach intervalic singing.
Each joint on the hand represented a different solfège syllable, in a different hexachord, and teachers
would point to different joints on their hand, and on their fingers, and have their students sing the
intervals. And this became the most common way to teach sight singing, through the use of this
Guidonian hand.
Writing music into manuscripts was a regular part of living in a monastery. Special rooms called
scriptoria were dedicated to manuscript production. Creating a manuscript was part of the religious
experience of being in a monastery as well.
Prayers were said as you entered the room, and monks were able to really think about and meditate on
the text as they wrote it down.
The creation of a manuscript was a long and involved effort on the part of many people. For example, an
entire flock of sheep were necessary just to create the parchment for a single book.
In addition to musical notation, there were elaborately detailed drawings and illuminations, detailed
pictures, sometimes just for a single letter, and sometimes for ornate borders and other drawings.
There were also leather bindings, sometimes with metals and gemstones.
[MUSIC]
sample can be heard at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKu0WEoYtKU
Chants were written and recorded into manuscripts for hundreds of years in order to standardize the
musical service in the Catholic Church to prevent variation over time.
Guido's system for notation and sight reading were used in churches to help people read and sight sing
music they had never heard before.
But there's still the problem of rhythm.
Again, try to forget our modern system of notation and go back a thousand years to this simple system
of neumes, which are marks that show the pitch with no concept of meter, measures, time signature, or
even a specific indication of rhythm for a given note.
How would you create that? Maybe some lines and dots like the ancient Greeks used?
We'll talk about some of the solutions and the development of rhythm in the next lecture. Okay, let's
review.
Neumes in the 700s and 800s CE were… (a) a form of musical notation that showed both pitch and
rhythm (b) squares and other marks on a musical staff that indicated pitch but not rhythm
(c) “gestures” on musical staff that showed approximate rhythm but not pitch (d) small statues in
people’s gardens
CORRECT ANSWER (B) Squares and other marks ……
Part 4 Notre Dame Polyphony
One of the biggest issues with neumatic notation is that it doesn't show rhythm.
There's a flow to a chant. Some notes are held longer than others. Sometimes it speeds up. Sometimes it
slows down. Sometimes there are pauses. It's a learned art. It takes time and experience to know how a
chant should be musically realized or performed.
Chant in the Catholic Church was officially monophonic, or one line of music (at a time). But it's likely
that musicians in the Middle Ages experimented with polyphony— that is, more than one musical line
happening at the same time. (polyphonic)
It's also likely that these experiments in polyphony were improvised, based off of the written chant. The
singers in a church, or the Schola Cantorum, the school of singers, were given a specific chant for a
specific text and most people, most of the singers would sing the written chant. But there would be a
few people who were able to improvise a line of music, either above or below that written line, that
given line, and these improvisations were the first experiments in polyphony.
One of the earliest forms of polyphony was a simple drone. In other words, some of the singers would
hold a note usually below the written chant, as the chant was being sung above. So…. just a simple held
note, for a drone.
Another example of early polyphony is from a treatise in the 800s describing singing in parallel
organum, which is another way of saying polyphony that is improvised in a parallel line to a given chant.
In other words, one person might sing the chant as written, and another person might sing the same
chant up a perfect fifth or up an octave. So that was described as organum, and in this case it's parallel
organum. They're singing the same chant, just, let's say, a fifth apart.
They experimented with two lines moving together in similar motion, which means they follow the
same contours of the musical line, moving like a school of fish, all swimming in the same direction. And
sometimes they sang in contrary motion. One voice would go up while the other voice goes down.
There were complicated rules that they followed, because only certain consonances and dissonances
were allowed under specific circumstances. And keep in mind, all of this was improvised.
So it took quite a musical mind to be able to think of the right consonances and the right dissonances at
the right time in order to be able to improvise and sing a chant and sing organum in real time. And none
of this was written down.
The musicians at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris in the 12th and 13th centuries continued to
experiment with polyphony. As music became more complicated, there needed to be a more elaborate
system of notation. Sometime around 1250, for the first time in over 1,000 years, a system of notation
that would indicate rhythm was described by Johannes de Garlandia, a French music theorist.
Garlandia, in his treatise entitled "Of Measurable Music," or "Concerning Measurable Music," came up
with various combinations of neumes, linked together, called "ligatures." (sample ligatures…not from
lecture)
There were six rhythmic modes, as he called them, shown here.
The basic unit of time was called a tempus. A tempus always got one beat, and they were always
grouped in threes, and that's the key.
There always had to be groupings of three beats together in, in these patterns of ligatures. And there
were two kinds of notes, a long and a breve.
And, depending on the mode you were using, a long got two or three beats. So, note that the exact
duration of a note was not shown. It was relative to which mode you were in.
But the advantage is, for the first time, you could indicate a specific rhythm for a line of music. It was a
great innovation, and great for its time, but there are some obvious problems here. The biggest issue is
that there are only six rhythmic modes, which doesn't give a composer much musical freedom when it
comes to rhythm.
There had to be a better way.
So in about 1280, the composer and music theorist Franco of Cologne, created a new system of notation
in his treatise "The Art of Measurable Music." And instead of using ligatures, or combinations and
patterns of neumes, his innovation was to create shapes, note shapes, that directly indicated rhythm.
He had four note shapes that he used: a double long, a long, a breve, and a semibreve.
Now, music was still grouped in threes, which was called a perfection, similar to Garlandia's rhythmic
modes. A long could still be two or three beats, and a breve could still be one or two beats, depending
on the context, always grouped in threes.
But the note shapes allowed for new combinations of rhythms that weren't possible in the older system
of only six rhythmic modes.
So each voice could now have unique shape and unique rhythmic pattern, as long as
everything was grouped in threes.
So, to summarize, we go from musical notation using only
neumes, that show no rhythm, in the 800s, 900s, and into
the 1000s, to the first time, in the 13th century, being able
to show six rhythmic modes grouped in threes, and now,
with Franco of Cologne's new system, actual note shapes
that indicate more directly what the rhythm is.
However, that's still relative. It's always grouped in threes.
And these are the limitations of Franco's system.
There were seemingly endless rhythmic combinations now.
But music still had to be grouped in perfections, in threes.
You're always thinking about the context to figure out if a
long was two or three beats, or if a breve got one or two
beats.
We'll talk about the final step in opening up the possibilities for rhythm, in the next lecture.
Okay, let's review with a simple quiz.
The major developments and innovations in music from the 800’s through the 1300’s included:
(a) Rhythm (b) Notation (c) Polyphony (d) all of the above
Correct answer: D all of the above
Part 5 Rhythm in the Ars Nova 14th Century
At the beginning of the 14th century, there was finally a system of musical notation that showed exact
pitches, but durations were relative.
Music was rhythmically grouped into threes, so the same note shape could be given two or three beats,
depending on context. And not only could this system be confusing, but after a while, it becomes
extremely limiting.
Philippe de Vitry, a French composer, music theorist, poet, amongst other things, is credited with
solving the problem. Philippe de Vitry is credited with creating the Ars Nova, or "New Art" of music, in
the 1300s. And some people actually refer to the era of the 1300s as the Ars Nova. In Philippe de Vitry's
treatise, the last line actually refers to that. It says, "This is the new art"—it uses the words "Ars nova."
And so that era is sometimes called the Ars Nova.
What made this entirely new system of music possible were his innovations in notation—specifically,
breaking the idea of a perfection, that music need to be grouped into threes.
The new notation allowed for several levels of division. Breves could now be broken into groups of two
or three semibreves. And the semibreve could now be broken into two or three smaller units called
minims. And this may not seem like a big deal, but it was probably the most radical shift in the course of
musical development up until that time. For the first time, note durations were now fixed according to
the note shape, no longer forced into groups of three.
From Philippe de Vitry's system, we get four distinct time signatures or meters. So, let's start at the top
level.
If a breve is divided into three semibreves, and each semibreve
is then divided into minims, that gives us our 9/8 time
signature, and this sounds like three groups of triplets, which
wasn't such a big change from what had come before.
If a breve is divided into three semibreves, but each semibreve
is only divided into two minums, which is a new feature of the
Ars Nova, that gives us a 3/4 time signature, which would have sounded quite different from what had
come before, but the overall grouping was still three.
If a breve is divided into two semibreves, and each semibreve is divided into three minims, that gives us
a 6/8 time signature. This might sound like two groups of triplets, which again was not a big change from
what had come before.
And finally, if a breve is divided into two semibreves, and each semibreve is dividing into two minims, for
the first time we get a completely different sound, a completely different time signature— a duple time
signature or 2/4—and this was the most radical of all the new time signatures. There are no groups of
three at all.
So the real innovation here is fixed note shapes which mean that rhythm is no longer relative,
dependent on what was necessary to create “a perfection”. And this new system of notation opens up
possibilities that could not have been imagined before. For the first time, both triple and duple meter
are possible—which is ... duple, again, is 2/4, and now, since note shapes retain their rhythmic value
regardless of the context, syncopation is possible for the first time.
And these developments allowed composers to exploit all conceivable combinations of rhythm. And a
few composers took these ideas to the extreme in the late 1300s and 1400s. And some of the most
complex music, rhythmically complex music ever, was written around this time, combining
syncopations, mixed meter, and even different voices in different meters at the same time.
Without this new system of notation, the musical developments that took place in the Renaissance and
beyond would not be possible.
Music can be heard here: (not the same recording) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oub1t9ftbLA
Okay, let's review with a simple quiz.
The main innovation of the Ars Nova was that…
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
Note shapes indicated fixed rhythms instead of relative rhythms, which could be subdivided
Syncopations were now possible
Duple meter was now possible, along with other new time signatures
All of the above
COREECT ANSWER: D all of the above
Part 6 Glossary of Terms and Notation Today
In our discussion of notation, I want to show you one of my own scores to illustrate just how much
notation has developed in the past 1,000 years.
This score is from an arrangement I did of Ladino
folk songs, which are from the Judeo-Spanish
tradition. It's a fairly straightforward
arrangement, setting these folk tunes for
unaccompanied violin, and as such there's
nothing in this notation that's out of the
ordinary. But even in this case, we can see just
how much the notation of our music has evolved
since chant was first written down.
The score has an anatomy that I'll demonstrate.
If you're a musician who is experienced at
reading music, most of this, if not all of what
follows, will be recognizable and already known
to you. But even if you don't play an instrument,
you'll have heard some of these terms. But it's
good to cover all of it so that we're "keeping
score" the same way.
The first thing you'll see besides the title and names is the tempo, half-note equals 72 rhythmico, or just
rhythmic. The number refers to the beats per minute. So there are 72 half-notes per minute, or 144
quarter-notes, which is pretty fast.
The tempo is very important and can be found on all standards metronomes that were first in use during
Beethoven's time. The beats per minute are a guideline for musicians to play. So, 60 beats per minutes
means that there will be a beat every second.
Then you'll see the clef sitting on the staff, which is the treble clef used for violin music, and to notate
anything else that's higher in pitch, like the flute, trumpet, ukelele, or soprano voice.
The word clef is from French, and it means key.
So the clef is the key to reading the notes that are on the staff.
Then there's the key signature of two sharps. We call sharps, flats, and naturals "accidentals," and they
alter written pitches higher and lower.
The key signature consists of accidentals, and it identifies the key of the piece that we're looking at. So in
this case where we have two sharps, that means either D major or b minor. This piece is in b minor.
If you want to know more about keys and scales, check out those terms and "circle of fifths" online.
The number 3/2 on the staff tells us that there're three half-notes in this measure. This is the meter, and
it will remain until it's changed until the next measure.
The top number in most every case indicates the number of beats per bar and the bottom number
indicates the rhythmic value of the beat.
So here it's a half note but if it was a 4 on the bottom the beat would be felt in quarter notes. If it was an
8 on the bottom, the beat would be felt in eighth notes.
A great deal of music is just in 4/4, or 3/4. But really the meter is just a way that composers group
rhythms together into bars. So, some pieces change meters quite a bit.
It's worth checking out Stravinsky's Rite of Spring if you want to see some really remarkable meter
changes.
Underneath the first note is the letter "p", which many people will know means piano or soft.
The notations used to control volume are called "dynamics." "f" stands for forte or loud. And then there
are gradations of this like pianissimo or mezzo-forte.
The 16th-century composer Giovanni Gabrielli is often credited as being the first to really use dynamics
in his music. But like all parts of notation, this has evolved since then to become very specific.
Underneath the first few notes are articulations, which are notations that affect both the duration of the
note and the way it's sounded.
The first articulation—the line that's underneath the note C-sharp and D— is called a "tenuto," and this
word is from the Italian to hold. And indeed if you see a tenuto it can mean to hold a note for its full
duration until the next note…But it can also mean to emphasize the note as well.
The next articulation, the small dot, is called a "staccato." And like it sounds, it asks that the note be
played short and not for its full duration.
There can also be the implication, though, that the note should be played lightly.
So as you can see, there's a lot of room for interpretation looking at a musical score.
Like, how loud is loud? And how short is short?
And then there are aspects of music, often ephemeral things, which are hard to put into words. They
can't really be notated. This is a wonderful aspect to the performance of music, I think.
I mean, if we all played a piece perfectly, the same way, based on its notation, it would be pretty boring
to listen to anything more than once.
Now let's pause for a moment to review the material.
The number, or “metronome mark,” in the tempo is the number of
(a) beats per minute (b) quarter notes in a bar (c) bars in the piece (d) bars per minute
CORRECT ANSWER A beats per minute