Mikes Music Room – Music Articles

Of original musical genius the Romans had little or none, and they were content to take their music, like every other artistic adjunct of their national life, from the Greeks. The Greek was the child of nature, refined and educated through his own innate sense of beauty and fitness;. The Roman was a barbarian civilised with the civilisation of the barrack-yard and the camp. Thus it is that the music of the Romans is but the music of the Greeks transplanted in new and not very favourable surroundings.

To the Greek, Art of any kind was something great and almost holy. To the Roman, Art of any shape or kind was merely a relaxation, or at most a mere handmaid to display and vain glory. Roman music is thus simply Greek music in a decadent and corrupted condition, a thing of no artistic value, and an object of contempt to the very people among whom it was domiciled. The only personal influence exerted upon music by the Romans was in the development of wind instruments. A race of fighting-men, the Romans regarded military music more seriously than any other branch of the art; essentially practical men, they could readily appreciate its usefulness ; and, in this respect, they remind one of the elderly warrior who opined that music was all very well on parade, but should not be allowed to interfere with conversation. In the Roman armies trumpets of various kinds were used, some of them being of immense proportions. All the military musical instruments were of brass, and comprised the tuba, a straight trumpet something like a modern post-horn in shape; the cornu, or horn, bent nearly in the form of a circle; the lituus, or clarion, slightly bent at the end; and the buccina, shaped like the horn, but of much greater size, the tube being about twelve feet long. Of these the tuba was used by the infantry, the litmis by the cavalry.

The most interesting feature in connection with Roman musical life is the first appearance of that cosmopolitanism, which has ever since remained such a prominent characteristic of musical art. Into Rome drained all the wealth, knowledge, and luxury of the known world. Greek philosophers and artists, Egyptian priests, men of all races from across the Alps, Jewish converts to Christianity, fleeing from persecution in their own country, all gravitated towards the great city; and it was among these warring influences that the infant Christian Church, preserver and regenerator of music, was quietly growing in power and influence; and, with the coming of Christianity, music is no longer of this country or that, but of the whole world.

Author
Mike Shaw
Musical Instruments USA

The musical history of the Greeks may be divided into two great periods, the mythological, and the historical. The first period covers the entire range of traditions and legends, and extends up to the time when the Greeks began to reckon by Olympiads, or periods of four years, the date of the first Olympiad being 776 B.C. From 776 B.C. to 161 A.D. is the historical period.

To the first period belong the stories of Orpheus and Eurydice, perhaps the noblest and most beautiful of all the fairy-tales of art; the building of Thebes and Cadmea by Amphion, who by his playing caused the rocks and stones to move spontaneously; the contest between Apollo and Marsyas; the myth of the Sirens, and numberless other stories and traditions with which the Hellenic mind loved to surround, as with many garlands, the art of music.

Homer provides us with a link between the traditional and historical periods; and in the ” Iliad ” and the ” Odyssey ” are to be found both legend and exact information.

Coming to the historical period proper of Greek music, we cannot fail to be impressed with the broadly moral significance which music possessed for the Greeks. Among the Assyrians,, it is to be imagined, music was more or less sensuous in character; among the Egyptians it apparently partook of the nature of an occult philosophy; among the Israelites music was primarily an act of worship; and it is, therefore, to the Greeks that the credit of being the first to recognise the educative value of music is due. Although not yet an independent art, music probably gained very nearly as much as it lost in this respect, by being made an essential part in the grandest manifestations of the literary and dramatic genius of Greece. Thus the Greek play resembled more an opera than a play, the word being used in its modern acceptation

English literature of the Middle Ages is full of references to minstrels and minstrelsy, and abounds in quaint and curious details of their life and manners; and for the present-day reader, desirous of information concerning the early music of this country, no better authority exists than Chappell

Music in the United Kingdom prior to the seventeenth century, or at any rate the latter part of the sixteenth, presents itself under very much the same aspects as on the Continent. On the one hand Church music, on the other Minstrelsy and latterly, the rise of a secular art, secular in spirit but hampered with ecclesiastical traditions.

English Church music of the pre-Reformation period necessarily moved on the same lines as that of the Continent, although probably existing in a far less advanced stage of cultivation. Minstrelsy, however, was greatly esteemed among English. Scotch, Irish, and Welsh; and among the Irish and Welsh the bardic caste enjoyed a degree of power and influence probably unknown in any other country of the world. Thus in Ireland the three grades of minstrels or bards of the legendary period

Woe betide the unlucky noble who was ridiculed or denounced by a Troubadour! In the first instance he might feel assured that before long every court and castle in Southern Europe would be laughing at him, and in the second, he might consider himself fortunate if he was not compelled to turn out and defend his life and property against the steel-clad paladins of a hostile neighbour, as had the Lord of Rossilho when Alfonso of Aragon laid waste his territories, as vengeance for the death of the Troubadour Guillem de Cabestanh.

To the Troubadours we owe the existence of various art-forms common to music and poetry, such as the ” Pastorela,” or ” Pastorela ” the shepherd’s song, whence the modern Pastoral or Pastorale; the “Alba”

The next step in advance was the addition of a second part to the Chant, moving on certain fixed intervals