Western Music

I

Introduction

Western Music, the music of Europe and of areas of the world settled by Europeans. Western music is one of several separate, highly developed musical cultures, each of which has its own specific theoretical base that encompasses, among other things, its own system of tunings and scales, its preferred timbres (tone colors), its particular approach to musical form, and its characteristic musical textures. As such, Western music stands alongside other major musical systems, notably those of India, Indonesia, Islamic culture, China, and Japan.

This article discusses the history of the art music of Western culture. For religious, symbolic, and social aspects of Western music, see Music and see Musical Instruments. For elements of music theory, see Counterpoint; Harmony; Musical Form; Musical Notation; Musical Rhythm. For the music of non-European peoples living in European-settled regions, see African Music; Native Americans of North America: Music and Dance; Native Americans of Middle and South America; See also African American Music; American Music; Folk Music; Jazz; Latin American Music; Popular Music.

II

Music in Antiquity

Although an isolated cuneiform example of Hurrian (Hittite) music of the 2nd millennium bc has been tentatively deciphered, the earliest European music known is that of the ancient Greeks and Romans, dating from about 500 bc to ad 300. Fewer than a dozen examples of Greek music survive, written in an alphabetical notation that cannot be deciphered with certainty. Greek and Roman theories of the nature and function of music, however, are discussed at length in the writings of such philosophers as Aristotle, Boethius, Plato, and Pythagoras. These writers believed that music originated with the god Apollo, the mythological musician Orpheus, and other divinities, and that music reflected in microcosm the laws of harmony that rule the universe. They believed, furthermore, that music influences human thoughts and actions. Greek music was primarily monophonic (limited to one melody at a time sung or played without harmony). Occasionally, however, one or more musicians in an ensemble might play a variant of the melody while other musicians were playing its original version. This produced a somewhat more complex musical texture called heterophony.

The rhythm of Greek music was closely associated with language. In a song, the music duplicated the rhythms of the text. In an instrumental piece it followed the rhythmic patterns of the various poetic feet. The internal structure of Greek music was based on a system of modes that combined a scale with special melodic contours and rhythmic patterns. A similar organization exists today in Arab music and Indian music. Because each Greek mode incorporated rhythmic and melodic characteristics, listeners could distinguish between them. Greek philosophers wrote that each mode possessed an emotional quality and that listeners would experience this quality on hearing a composition in that mode. Today, without further knowledge of the music itself, no one can say whether this idea was true in human experience or was only a theory.

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The most common Greek instruments were the kithara, a form of lyre associated with Apollo, and the aulos, an oboelike instrument associated with the god Dionysus. The kithara was said to have had a calming or uplifting effect on listeners, and the aulos was said to have communicated excitement. These instruments were used in religious ceremonies as well as in the theater, where they accompanied the performance of Greek dramas. Instrumental playing reached its apex around 300 bc, when many musicians participated in contests.

The Romans seem to have carried on the Greek musical traditions and to have contributed little of their own. They did develop some brass instruments, however, which they used in battle and in military processions. They also invented the hydraulis, an organ with a hydraulic air-pressure stabilizer. See Greek Music.

III

Early Medieval Period

In the Middle Ages most professional musicians were employed by the Christian church. Because the church was opposed to the paganism associated with ancient Greece and Rome, it did not encourage performances of Greek and Roman music. Consequently, this music died out.

Little is known of the unaccompanied chant that was used in services of the early Christian church. Christian chant appears, however, to have been drawn from the ritual music of the Jewish synagogue and from secular tunes of the time. The chant melodies that developed in Rome were inventoried and assigned specific places in church ceremonies during the period from the 5th to the 7th century. Roman chant became known as Gregorian chant after Pope Gregory I, the Great, who may have composed some of the melodies and who actively encouraged an orderly, ritualized use of music by the church. Because Gregory and later popes preferred Gregorian chant to the varieties that had developed elsewhere in Europe, Gregorian chant eventually superseded most of the others. Gregorian and other chant styles are preserved in many manuscripts. The musical signs used in these manuscripts, called neumes, are the earliest roots of modern musical notation.

By at least as early as the 9th century many musicians began to feel the need for a more elaborate music than unaccompanied melody. They began to add an extra voice part to be sung simultaneously with sections of the chant. The musical style that resulted is called organum. In early organum the added voice part simply paralleled the chant melody but was sung a fourth or fifth above it. Later the extra part became an independent countermelody. Organum was important in the history of music, because it was the first step toward the development of the musical texture known as polyphony (multipart music), the extensive use of which is the most distinctive feature of Western music.

Around the end of the 12th century, organum was being written in three and four voice parts, forming long works that could fill the vast spaces of Gothic cathedrals with large quantities of sound. The principal centers in the development of organum were in France, at the Abbey of Saint Martial in Limoges and at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. An English version of organum, called gymel, had also developed by this period.

In order for musicians to be able to read and perform several different voice parts simultaneously, a precise system of musical notation had to be developed. The notation of pitch had been solved by the use of a musical staff of four, five, or more lines, with each line or space representing a specific pitch, as in present-day notation. The perfection of this system is attributed to the 11th-century Italian Benedictine monk Guido d’Arezzo. Time values proved to be more difficult to notate. The solution that evolved in the 11th and 12th centuries was based on a group of short rhythmic patterns called rhythmic modes. The same pattern, or mode, was repeated over and over until the composer indicated by a sign in the notation that another rhythmic mode was to supersede it. In music using this “modal notation,” a variety of rhythmic movement was achieved by employing different modes simultaneously in different voice parts and by changing modes during the course of a composition. By the late 13th century modal notation had been abandoned, and the beginnings of the modern system of long and short note values had come into use.

Organum was a sophisticated musical development that was encouraged and appreciated primarily by the educated clerics in the Christian church. A secular musical tradition, simpler in makeup, existed outside the church. This was the monophonic music of itinerant musicians, the jongleurs and their successors, the troubadours and trouvères of France and the minnesingers of Germany.

Both sacred and secular music used a wide variety of instruments, including such string devices as the lyre and psaltery and the medieval fiddle, or viele. Keyboard instruments included the organ. Percussion instruments included small drums and small bells.

IV

Late Medieval Music

A major stylistic change occurred in music during the early 14th century. The new style was called ars nova (Latin, “new art”) by one of its leading composers, the French prelate Philippe de Vitry. The resulting music was more complex than any previously written, reflecting a new spirit in Europe that emphasized human resourcefulness and ingenuity. De Vitry also invented a system that included time signatures. This allowed musicians of the 14th century to achieve a new rhythmic freedom in their compositions.

The new complexities took several forms. Expanding on the principle of short rhythmic modes, composers of ars nova used rhythmic patterns of a dozen or more notes, which they repeated over and over in one or more voice parts of a composition. The new principle is called isorhythm (Greek iso, “same”). Composers used an isorhythmically organized voice part as the foundation for large works and wove other melodies over it to produce intricate polyphonic designs. The foundation voice was usually taken over from a portion of Gregorian chant. This borrowed melody was known as the cantus firmus (Latin, “fixed melody”). The musical genre in which composers used the isorhythmic principle to the greatest extent was the motet. Some motets, in addition to complexities of structure, contained several texts sung simultaneously.

A second complexity of ars nova concerned the overall structure of music written for the mass. Before 1300, polyphonic settings had sometimes been written for separate sections of the mass. In the 14th century, for the first time, all five sections that make up the Ordinary of the mass were treated as an integrated whole. The first person to do this was the French cleric, poet, and composer Guillaume de Machaut. His example, however, was not followed until the next century. See also Musical Settings of Mass.

A distinctive feature of the ars nova was the increased attention given to secular music. For the first time the major composers of the period wrote secular as well as sacred music. The unharmonized melodies that had been sung in the 13th century by the troubadours and trouvères were expanded by 14th-century composers into two- and three-voice pieces called chansons (French, “songs”). The patterns of line repetition in the texts for these chansons determined the overall form of the music. The most commonly used schemes in France were the rondeau, the virelai, and the ballade. In Italy the madrigal, the caccia, and the ballata were the preferred types. The foremost Italian composer of the period was Francesco Landini.