Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Medieval stuff again and again and again and again















Music in this time period was very different. Instruments used to perform medieval music still exist, though in different forms. The flute was once made of wood rather than sivler, or other metal, and could be made as a side-blown or end-blown instrument. The recorder comes from the gemshorn, which is made out of a cow horn and has wholes drilled into it to create musical sounds. The gemshorn is a member of the ocarina family. Medieval days used many string plucking instruments. The bowed lyra of the byzantine empire was the first recorded European bowed string instrument. The hurdy-gurdy, a mechanical violin, using a rosined wooden wheel attached to a crank to bow its strings. In this era music was both secular and sacred. The earliest Medieval music did not have any kind of notational system. Medieval music began after the Roman empire fell. Troubadours were poet musicians, they wrote about romance with knights and ladies. Troubadours created and memorized their own music. Only religious music was written down and saved during the medieval times. Gregorian church chant, a special kind of music sung in the church. In Asia they had their own type of medieval music with different instruments. A cultures music was developed by all sorts of different reasons depending where they lived and how everyone acted, and what they created in their different regions, and what resources they had. The legendary founder of music in Chinese mythology was Ling Lun, who made bamboo pipes tuned to the sounds of birds. The development of Chinese music was strongly influenced by foreign music, especially from Central Asia. The oldest written music in China is Youlan or the Solitary Orchid. The position of musicians was much lower than that of painters in China. Silk, bamboo, wood, stone, metal, clay, gourd, and hide these are the eight categories of instruments in china. Silk instruments are mostly string instruments. Some examples of instruments are things like oboes such as guan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guan_(instrument)










medieval music

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Ancient Music


Ancient Music is a very interesting subject. Music has been around forever. It has been used as communication, and for celebrations. Music has uplifted peoples moods, and even sometimes make them worse. There are many types of music, all somewhat different from each other, but relating because they slowly originated from the prehistoric times and evolved into more complex sounds to now day music. This prehistoric music had an instrument called the bone flute. This instrument was created from bird bones. There are many layers of music, including: Biblical music, Ancient music (which started when the prehistoric years ended), Early music, and Medieval music.

I'm going to start with Medieval music 1st ,because I want to end in the begining of music. Instead of the endless slow moving flow of new music slowly creeping out of the veins of future creativity. Medieval music was very important to the people, being the major form of entertainment. The slow spread of Christianity helped people like hymns and find them more interesting. The Medieval instruments were the starters for now day instruments. They had wind instruments, string instruments, percussion ,and so on and so on. They had a very interesting instrument called the Crumhorn. The Crumhorn was a double reed instrument, (created in the 15th century) . The harp was a beautiful creation. It created lovely sounds that would calm even the most savage of beast. The harp was liked most by troubadours which were traveling musicians. The other type of musician in the medieval times were the minstrels. They were court musicians.

My next topic will be Early, and Ancient music. These two sections of history kind of run together. They are before the medieval period but show the start of new interesting music slowly turning into even better music for the medieval period. Early music describes the time period of European classical form of music after the fall of the Roman Empire. The Roman Catholic Church kept all these different sounds tied together and kept them some what alike. The Ancient music describes the period of when prehistoric period began to end. "The oldest song known" was written in cuneiform. Cuneiform was the earliest writting. Some musical instruments of this time were instruments with double pipes.

Biblical music was an essential part of training in the schools of prophets. They sang high spirited music and played music to make you more enthusiastic and some of the music would make you sad. The orgins of music are not known. Music may have started from imitating sounds from phrehistoric peoples surroundings, thus eventually creating music through a slow process. They mostly played flute in the prehistoric times because thats all that we can prove that they know how to do.