Questions tagged [history]
For questions about how music has developed and changed over time or for questions about concepts and ideas of a historic period of music. Do not use just because the subject of the question is a historic figure or piece.
392
questions
4
votes
0answers
37 views
How was mixolidian mode introduced in Northeastern Brazilian Music?
Northeastern region of Brazil has a great variety of traditional and folkloric music genres. The most well-known genre is forró, followed also by baião and xaxado.
These music genres are usually ...
6
votes
3answers
217 views
Has such an anti-musical tune ever been composed?
The following part from chapter 84 of the Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality fanfic describes a tune that appears to be designed to be unnerving.
The humming started as a simple children's ...
3
votes
3answers
1k views
Why did it take a millennium to use harmony/polyphony (900 AD) when Pythagoras discovered perfect fourth and fifth around 500 BC?
Considering the fact that Pythagoras formulated the properties of Perfect Fifth and Fourth around 500 BC, why did it take so long to include them in Music?. The first instance of using the Fifth in ...
8
votes
2answers
115 views
When was the concept of a “triad chord” first introduced?
Chiara Bertoglio, “A Perfect Chord: Trinity in Music, Music in the Trinity,” Religions 4, no. 4 (December 2013): 485–501, §6. A “Harmonious” God, p. 493, claims:
It was not before the 16th century, ...
-2
votes
6answers
221 views
Why does guitar have so much more shape/tone variety than all other instruments?
For acoustic guitars, we have dreadnaught, auditorium, classical, jumbo, mini, grand concert, arch top, parlor (then there are new shapes coming from Taylor) Even if I count the whole orchestra family ...
1
vote
4answers
137 views
Accidentals - what's that?
We are aware that an accidental is a sign which changes the pitch of a note usually stated in the key signature, like a natural sign before a C in key D makes that into C♮, etc. Sometimes even the key ...
3
votes
2answers
96 views
What are the trends that led to fizzling of ars antiqua and rising of ars nova?
What is the trends that led to the fizzling of ars antique and to the rising of ars nova?
8
votes
2answers
1k views
Who decides chord details in published songs?
I like to make lead sheets of songs like this to learn to improvise from, condensing the published sheet music down to a single page with no turns. In working from my two copies of It's Only A Paper ...
1
vote
1answer
131 views
History of “strumming” the piano (Rhythmic repeated chords)
In many songs, a particular chord gets played over and over on a piano, very similar to how you might strum a chord on a guitar.
Examples:
...
2
votes
1answer
80 views
Did the first piano use an equal-tempered or natural scale?
Both the piano and the equal-tempered scale were invented in the 1700s (according to Wikipedia, at least). But what I'm wondering is whether the first piano constructed used an equal-tempered scale, ...
2
votes
1answer
123 views
What is the origin of the notation A4, B3, F5, etc. (i.e. <letter><number>)
Long before I started to play an instrument I used to tune my young son's guitar for him using a device which told me how close the strings were to the correct notes of E2, A2, D3, G3, B3 and E4.
When ...
4
votes
1answer
54 views
Chants in Renaissance vocal music
In notice that in some vocal works composed during the Renaissance, especially masses, long chunks of music (sometimes the whole piece) are preceded by a monophonic, often short chant which is ...
4
votes
2answers
98 views
What are the earliest examples of using the circle of fifths in western music
While reading about Vavilov's "Ave Maria" previously attributed to Caccini, I met an interesting argument, that probably nobody in the USSR and maybe later in the western countries noticed ...
3
votes
1answer
89 views
Is there literal correlation between sounds and the words to describe them?
In English, we describe pitches as "high" and "low", as being "sharp" or "flat". A timbre can be "fat". At least one study suggests that there is a ...
5
votes
4answers
1k views
Do the world-renowned classical composers ever seriously modify their compositions after their works got published by publishers?
Do the world-renowned classical composers ever seriously or in minor ways modify their music compositions after their works got published by publishers and after their works are already openly ...
3
votes
1answer
135 views
Was Nina Simone really refused admission to Julliard on racial grounds even though she passed the audition? [closed]
I recently watched the movie 'Green Book'. While I was watching it I was reminded of someone who once told me that Nina Simone was refused entry to Julliard on racial grounds. Is this accurate and if ...
18
votes
4answers
3k views
Who was listening to Bach's compositions in his lifetime?
Who ever encountered his work? Was his music played somewhere else in Europe, or only where he lived? What strata of society had any chance of coming into contact with his music? What might be the ...
6
votes
1answer
91 views
What was the amount of repertoire learned as an adult professional musician in various time periods?
As an adult professional musician (church organist), I discovered that, once I became a mother (a year ago), I had less time to practice (from approx 4 hrs a day to about 1.5 hrs a day), but--now I am ...
5
votes
4answers
1k views
Who decides how a historic piece is adjusted (if at all) for modern instruments?
Here we have a video of a historically-informed (or period) performance of Moonlight Sonata's first movement.
Wikipedia notes:
Some critics contest the methodology of the HIP movement, contending ...
7
votes
3answers
342 views
Latin voice denotations in Renaissance vocal music
I see that in the original printings of renaissance vocal music, the voices are labeled with Latin words like cantus, triplex, medius, etc... Assuming that these words denote the ranges of their ...
6
votes
1answer
494 views
What is the origin and original meaning of “tonic”, “supertonic”, “mediant”, etc.?
Each of the pitches in the diatonic scale has a "name":
tonic
supertonic
mediant
subdominant
dominant
submediant
subtonic
I was first introduced to tonic, dominant, and subdominant in the ...
3
votes
3answers
216 views
60's pop music. How well known was theory, e.g. the pentatonic scale?
Many years ago, at school some friends and I played versions of instrumental guitar pieces by the Shadows and other bands.
Our method was to slow down the vinyl record and listen to what was played ...
5
votes
2answers
88 views
Are there folk music families, analogous to language families?
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestral language or parental language, called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects ...
0
votes
2answers
76 views
Music that comes before its time [closed]
I was discussing a time travel premise, where someone from our time finds themselves say in 1980, and how they would manage. Some people seem to think it obvious that such a traveler could, if they ...
1
vote
2answers
98 views
What are the primary historical piano training methods, and what are their defining characteristics?
There are various historically important or well-known piano training methods or schools (“schools of thought” as opposed to institutions, which are not the focus here):
• The Leschetizky method
• The ...
8
votes
3answers
1k views
Does Schoenberg or Glenn Gould have a point? Does a great deal of music remain to be written in C major?
There's a great interview online where Glenn Gould talks about Stravinsky and Schoenberg (circa 1960). His comments about Stravinsky certainly haven't aged well but nonetheless, he does make some ...
1
vote
2answers
46 views
Which tempo indications have changed meaning over time, and how so?
I recall a piano teacher once telling me that the tempo marking in a piece I was learning (andante, if memory serves) meant different things in different eras. (Maybe slower in the Baroque than in the ...
8
votes
3answers
612 views
How did the ancient Greeks notate their music?
Ancient Greece had a sophisticated musical system that allowed for transposable modes and flexible instrument tunings. Known as the Greater Perfect System, it is discussed in detail in What are the ...
13
votes
2answers
2k views
Did Beethoven “invent” ragtime with Piano Sonata No 32 Op 111?
I had an interesting question. It is common knowledge that ragtime came about as a genre with Scott Joplin. However, I am curious if anyone has any information about Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 32 in ...
4
votes
3answers
180 views
Come to think of it, who did put the bop in the bop shoo bop shoo bop?
There have been "la la la"s and nonsense lyrics in music since ... well, since a long time back. Why, who could forget that sixteenth-century classic "Nos Galan"? And Nigunim have ...
1
vote
1answer
88 views
Schubert G flat impromptu harmony
In my score, during the repetition of the opening theme, bar 5, the G flat major chord changes directly to an E flat minor chord, as is played in this performance.
However, the performances by Kissin ...
0
votes
1answer
134 views
Why are notes created the way they are today? [duplicate]
The main question I have is admittedly broad. I'd like to know why the notes we use today are the way they are. By that I mean how is it that we have converged upon the specific discrete set of ...
8
votes
1answer
156 views
What is the meaning of the “chiaroscuro” sound that was considered ideal in Classical and early-Romantic Italian opera?
Apparently, in Classical and early-Romantic Italian opera (the "bel canto" opera repertoire), the ideal kind of vocal colour was a so-called chiaroscuro sound. The chiaro- part translates as ...
2
votes
2answers
96 views
How do our music and music technology compare with those of Francis Bacon in 1627? [closed]
In The New Atlantis a European ship, lost in the Pacific somewhere west of Peru, comes upon the mythical island of Bensalem: Bacon's vision of a utopia. The Father of its state-sponsored scientific ...
4
votes
1answer
175 views
Where did Scriabin define his note to color mapping?
I'm searching for the root source of Alexander Scriabin's note color mapping.
Wikipedia states in: Clavier à lumières
that it is located in the score of Prometheus: Poem of Fire.
But, but, but in ...
14
votes
3answers
1k views
How seriously did romantic composers take key characterizations?
I just came across this list of key characterizations by Christian Schubart in 1806. I was aware of this phenomenon, and also know that it predated Schubart, e.g. influencing some choices in Handel's &...
11
votes
2answers
632 views
Where did “The Real Book” originally come from?
I saw my first copy of The Real Book when I was 15. The coolest, hippest, jazziest trumpet player I knew (he was 17 and knew who Miles Davis was) had a copy of this spiral-bound badge of savvy: a ...
6
votes
2answers
178 views
Etymology of crotchet [duplicate]
A crotchet in British English is one beat - a quarter in American English.
In French, the very similar word croche means a quaver (eighth note), just half the value of a crotchet.
The two words are ...
1
vote
1answer
60 views
Why is the Proper Sarum mode notated differently than it sounds (in the Yattendon hymnal)?
For context, image 1 is where I found this tune in another hymnal, and it looks like a sort of free-flowing attempt at notating (in standard notation) how a choir or congregation would sing. Images 2 ...
2
votes
4answers
124 views
What is it precisely in the music that makes you a 'Neoclassical' Composer?
I'm a little confused by what is meant we when say the 'Neoclassicism ' movement. Particularly this phrase from the official Wiki page.
Neoclassicism was an aesthetic trend rather than an organized ...
0
votes
1answer
84 views
What are these medieval musical instruments called? [closed]
What are the medieval musical instruments used in
La Bouree
Ballet des Sorciers
Ballet / Ballet des Bacchanales / Ballet des Matelotz /...
2
votes
2answers
62 views
How to incorporate a chorus sheet?
I'm in the process of re-producing some sheet music from the Civil War. My question involves the 'chorus sheet' found at the end of nearly every piece. For example, in this song: Save Our Flag, the ...
1
vote
1answer
141 views
Bach Die kunst der fuge reference in Beethoven Op. 111
In Beethoven last sonata's arietta, the variations starting at bar 33 seems to be clearly a reference to the contrapunctus 2 from die Kunst der fuge. Since as well Beethoven seems to attempt to do ...
0
votes
1answer
37 views
Good sources on the history of western music theory? [closed]
I have learned a lot of music theory history piecemeal and I’m looking for a book that covers the topic in a chronological, narrative way. Ideally, the book should cover the historical progress of ...
14
votes
1answer
702 views
Wind instruments: why is the left hand on top?
Every wind instrument which require the two hands to press keys (saxophone, clarinet, oboe…) have the left hand of the player being the top one. This consistency makes it easier to switch from one ...
3
votes
3answers
165 views
Liszt Petrarch Sonnet 104
While reading my Italian edition of Petrarch's sonnets, I noticed that Sonnet 104, one of the three Liszt took inspiration from for the pieces in Années de pèlerinage, is not the famous one that is ...
8
votes
3answers
394 views
Why did baroque music use percussion abundantly, but classical stopped?
Classical music evolved from baroque music, which in turn evolved from Renaissance music. Both baroque and even more so Renaissance make extensive use of percussion. It is certainly not new to ...
6
votes
3answers
208 views
Did continuo players consider figured bass as “interval symbols” or “chord symbols”?
The "modern" idea of chords and their inversions being functionally equivalent is generally credited to Jean-Philippe Rameau's 1722 Treatise on Harmony. However, figured bass was already in ...
2
votes
2answers
112 views
Where did the term 'Tone' originate?
We use 'tone' and consequently 'semitone' a lot in music - in Western music, the semitone is the smallest possible difference between two notes. (Not including guitar bends etc!).
However, the word '...
2
votes
1answer
117 views
reference pitch before the invention of the tuning fork [duplicate]
What was the reference pitch before the invention of the tuning fork in 1711?
Was it somewhat a task to try and get within the ballpark of referenced pitch?
Like for instance, maybe they knew what ...
