Mikes Music Room – Music Articles

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

Tags: amphion, art of music, assyrians, fairy tales, greek music, history of the greeks, iliad and the odyssey, music drama, musical aspect, musical history, occult philosophy, olympiads, orpheus and eurydice, thebes

When Europe emerged from the turmoil, throat-cutting, and intellectual barrenness of the centuries immediately succeeding the fall of the Roman Empire, music presented itself in a twofold aspect, which might be typified in two representative figures, the Minstrel or Gleeman, and the Monk. The Monk living and working quietly behind the strong walls of his monastery. The Minstrel, hopping from town to town all over the land the plaything of fortune, a man mixing with all classes of society, the friend and favourite of every one, utterly destitute of all status, and a man whom it was scarcely a crime to defraud or kill. The letter of music dwelt in the monasteries, but the spirit of music, staggered drunk, sometimes quite literally, by the roadside.

The outcast, wayfaring class, typified by the Minstrel, and which, comprising Minstrels, Jugglers, Acrobats, Mountebanks, Quacks, &c., held such an important place in the social economy of the Middle Ages, is supposed to have been a direct survival of the gladiatorial caste of Imperial Rome. In addition, it is probable that the adverse attitude of the Christian Church at large, towards those whose business in life is the providing of amusement for others, was also an inheritance from the days of the decadent Empire.

With more peaceful times arose an art more entitled to the name of Minstrelsy than the rude efforts of the strollers who gave entertainments before castle gates and in market-places. For a long period, Provence was the most peaceful land in Europe: it appears to have lain out of the track of warfare and misery, and in that sunny land Minstrelsy was undisturbedly cultivated by high and low. From the eleventh century, the Troubadours were treated with honour and respect.

The history of the Troubadour as existing in Provenge, in the days prior to the Albigensian Crusade, forms one of the most striking and unique episodes in literary and musical history. The social position of the Troubadours was a curious one. Recruited, as was the order, from all ranks of society, the Troubadour might be the son of a knight, as was Guiilem de Cabestanh; or he might belong to the trading classes, as did Peire Vidal, the son of a furrier at Toulouse. In any sphere of life, however, the fact of being a Troubadour at once placed a man on a sort of equality with the greatest; for a Troubadour was essentially a privileged person.

To the qualifications of the minstrel, the man with whom at first sight he would appear to have most in common, he added the caustic tongue of the jester, something of the inviolability of the herald and the Churchman, and, as often as not, the lance and shield of the knight. Roughly, he combined in his person the elements of those two modern institutions, Public Opinion and the Press. Like the minstrel at large, he was a kind of peripatetic newspaper, for his compositions found their way through the land more quickly than the last news from the Crusades.

Extracts taken

Tags: Gleeman, Minstrel, Music, musical history, secular music, Troubadour