Concise History of Western Music
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Chapter Index Chapter 1: Music in Ancient Greece and Early Christian Rome Chapter 2: Chant and Secular Song in the Middle Ages, 400Ð1450 Chapter 3: Polyphonic Music from Its Beginnings through the Thirteenth Century Chapter 4: French and Italian Music in the Fourteenth Century Chapter 5: England and Burgundian Lands in the Fifteenth Century: The Beginnings of an International Style Chapter 6: The Age of the Renaissance: Music of the Low Countries Chapter 7: The Age of the Renaissance: New Currents in the Sixteenth Century Chapter 8: Church Music of the Late Renaissance and Reformation Chapter 9: Church Music of the Late Renaissance and Reformation Chapter 10: Opera and Vocal Music in the Late Seventeenth Century Chapter 11: Instrumental Music in the Late Baroque Chapter 12: Music in the Early Eighteenth Century Chapter 13: The Early Classic Period: Opera and Instrumental Music in the Eighteenth Century Chapter 14: The Late Eighteenth Century: Haydn and Mozart Chapter 15: Ludwig van Beethoven Chapter 16: Romanticism and Nineteenth-Century Orchestral Music Chapter 17: Solo, Chamber, and Vocal Music in the Nineteenth Century Chapter 18: Opera, Music Drama, and Church Music in the Nineteenth Century Chapter 19: European Music from the 1870s to World War I Chapter 20: The European Mainstream in the Twentieth Century Chapter 21: Atonality, Serialism, and Recent Developments in Twentieth-Century Europe Chapter 22: The American Twentieth Century
 

Outlines:
  - Music in Ancient Greek Life and Thought
  - Music in the Early Christian Church
  Quiz
  Listening Guide
Chapter 1: Music in Ancient Greece and Early Christian Rome
Music in Ancient Greek Life and Thought
  1. Music and Religion

    1. Inseparable to ancient Greeks and Hebrews

    2. Each religious cult was devoted to a particular god or goddess and had its own characteristic musical styles and instruments.

  2. Characteristics of Greek Music (NAWM 1, 2)

    1. Most surviving music comes from relatively late periods and is for voice.

    2. Monophonic texture (melody without harmony or counterpoint)

    3. Heterophony in performance (instrument embellishing on the melody while a soloist or unison ensemble sings the same melody)

    4. Musical rhythm was bound to the rhythm of the poetry.

  3. Instruments of Greek Music

    1. Lyre and kithara (both strummed stringed instruments) used in the worship of Apollo and also for singing or recitation of epic poems

    2. Aulos (single- or double-reed instrument, usually with two pipes) used in the worship of Dionysys and to accompany great tragedies of the classical age

    3. Competitions of solo aulos and lyre players were held as early as 582 B.C.E. and instrumentalists became more virtuosic, eventually developing solo careers as recitalists.

  4. Greek Musical Thought

    1. Some of the concepts formulated by the ancient Greeks continued to influence medieval thinkers and musicians.

    2. Doctrines on the nature of music
      1. Music and number
        1. Pythagoras linked pitch relations (intervals) to numerical ratios.
        2. According to legend Pythagoras discovered this while listening to blacksmiths' hammers.

      2. Union of music and poetry
        1. Melos (song): speech plus rhythm and harmony (i.e., pitches) according to Plato
        2. Types of poetry named for types of song (e.g., hymn)
      3. Doctrine of Ethos (belief that music possessed moral qualities and could affect character and behavior)
        1. Aristotle wrote that music imitates states of the soul (passions) and that listening to the wrong kind of music could warp a person's character (theory of imitation).
        2. Plato and Aristotle both believed that education should include the proper kinds of modes, or styles of melody, to create desirable qualities in citizens.

    3. Descriptions of musical practices
      1. Harmonics: the study of pitch developed by Aristoxenus (ca. 330 B.C.E.) and reworked by Cleonides (ca. 100–400 C.E.)
      2. The tetrachord was the basic building block of musical scales. All tetrachords include four notes spanning a perfect fourth, but each genera (class) of tetrachord has different intervals between the second and third pitches.
      3. Consonances were the fourth, fifth and octave.

  5. The early Christian Church adapted some Greek principles but others were forgotten

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