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The music always seems to have existed. Beats of hands, shock of stones or pieces of wood, the
rhythm was the starting point of this art several times thousand-year-old.
One still finds some traces of them nowadays, in tribes of Africa or America.
Danse funéraire africaine
(only on the Cd-Rom
)
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To the beginning the music is limited to some incantations to act on the phenomena which the man cannot be explained like the wind, the thunder, the disease.
It is also used for communicating with the spirits, alleviating the demons, etc…
Certain legends praise the virtues of the music, sometimes malefic, sometimes beneficial. Thus the legend of Orphée, whose woman, Eurydice was bitten by a snake the very same day her weddings.
Orphée goes down then to the Hells and charms by the softness of its song the infernal divinities who return his wife to him.
It is in China, approximately ten centuries before J-C, that the music finds its first rules. She is inseparable from poetry and the dance. She expresses for wise Chinese, the balance of the sky and the ground.
At that time the Chinese range is limited to 5 notes which follow one another of fifth in fifth ascending on the basis of F.
Each note has a significance symbolic system, for example the first represents a prince, the second a minister etc. It is much later that a range with seven degrees, rather similar to ours, will make its appearance; for thirty centuries the two scales have coexisted in China.
From Egypt we do not have any fragment of noted music going back to this time. Murals and low-reliefs in the tombs, of the vestiges of instruments, the inscriptions papyrus however make it possible to fix with enough certainty, the artistic practices of the Egyptien people and to suppose that it was impassioned by the music and the dance.
Theory we do not know anything. The
rhythm undoubtedly fought using tambourines.
With the arm or the hand the Masters of music underlined the various degrees of the sounds, thus guiding the singers and the
musicians.
Stèle
égyptienne retrouvée dans un tombeau
In Greece the music arises initially in the vocal form, then instrumental. It seems always related to poetry, but embraces all the kinds, love song, choir singing, tragedy, and even a comic form of opera with the ancient comedy which comprised, dances, stanzas choral societies and together of choruses.
She plays a part very important in the public life and private at the point to become an institution of State about it. Marriages, funeral, ceremonies in all kinds, are accompanied by musical festivities.
The public is certainly attentive and enlightened, more especially as the music and poetry occupy an important place in education. The artists enjoy a great consideration and are largely remunerated.
The music is not besides the only artistic form developed in Greece at the time, the
sculpture and pictorial art has an major importance.
With the decline of ancient civilization, the taste of arts deteriorates little by little until
its almost complete disappearance.
Notation
grecque alphabétique
The music in Rome, will enclose our chapter on the music in Antiquity. Rome is subject to the influence of the Etruscan art in VIIème century before J-C.
The Etrusques ones use the zither, the quadrant, the right trumpet, the curved trumpet.
Rome brings little on the musical level, but it gradually achieves a separation between the music and the poetry which were closely dependent up to now.
The playwrights entrust the partition of their works to the composers.
Néron does not hesitate to face the public in the capacity as singer and it gains many contests, even if the jury prefers to save his life, to decree the victory with an unknown. It is necessary to await the advent of Christianity to see to take place changes in the musical design.
Here thus in some lines what were the first steps of the music. We will see at the following stage that the Middle Ages will appear very rich in innovations.
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