The Foundations: Early Greek to Early Church

This last week has been a fairly scattered one for me. Between packing up and moving to a new place and the daunting task of trying to find my theory workbook and sheet music in all the boxes, I haven’t had a lot of time to spend meticulously organizing this article.

That said, it’s been a fascinating couple of weeks in MUSC 2290, once I managed to get ahold of the textbook that UPS conveniently misplaced. We started with very early Greek music and have just barely made it past 1000 A.D (or C.E. for those of you who like to be politically correct). As I go, I’ll very likely be throwing some odd terms at you. If you see a word in boldface, you should be able to find its definition pretty close by.

The ancient Greeks were some of the very first to actually notate music. What it looked like at that points was just a normal wall of text (literally, sometimes) with little dashes or triangles over the various syllables to indicate pitch and/or rhythm. The melodies were very simple, and completely monophonic. Until 500 years ago or so, all music was made up of a single line of melody, no harmonies and definitely not more than one moving part.

One very unique thing about this early music was that it more than likely included quarter-tones. For those of us who have been struggling for years to get half steps and whole steps in tune, can you imagine having an even smaller interval to fine tune! This is also the point in history when writers began dividing music into modes. In modern western music, we only have 2 common modes, the major scale and the minor scale. But in the early Greek and Roman music, there were over a dozen.

Not all modes are created equal, however! Philosophers of the day had very strong opinions about which modes made you lazy, which ones inspired warfare, and which ones were only suited for children. I guess this was the beginning of music genre racism?

As the early church organized and became a larger part of the culture, it also became the catalyst for the evolution of music. By 600 A.D., Pope Gregory was in charge, and although he did not actually compose any music, his consolidation and codification of the church music gave rise to the term Gregorian Chant. At this point, the number of modes had dwindled down to 8, in pairs of 2. Each mode covered a single octave, and had a specific final and dominant. The final referred to the cadential tone, or the note used to finish a piece written in that particular mode. Dominant, in this case, isn't linked to the dominant chord function. Instead, it's the main note that the chant revolves around.

One of the reasons that early music was so simple was because of the fact that it was mostly a setting for religious text. The church believed that the text was supreme, and any elaborate accompaniment would be a distraction. St. Augustine even included this discussion in his famous Confessions. He praised the music for stirring up greater feelings of devotion but lamented the fact that if the music was particularly pleasing, it took his mind away from the subject matter.

                                                                                         Image credit: www.mscperu.org

This is also the reason that instruments were forbidden for church music. However, although there is no record that instruments were ever used in services, we have reason to believe that it was actually quite common. What we do have records of is more than a few edicts censoring the use of instruments. Somebody had to have been breaking the law for it to have been restated so often!

Most of the early chants were melismatic. This means that they were actually very short texts set to long meandering melodies. Certain syllables of the words were drawn out over sometimes a dozen notes. The perfect example of this is the Kyrie. The text was as follows: "Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison." (Lord, have mercy; Christ, have mercy; Lord, have mercy.) This short prayer would be set to any number of longer chant melodies. 

These chants were mostly step-wise, with maybe 1 or 2 jumps of a 4th or a 5th in the whole song. These rules persisted for quite a long time. Notation was at first similar to the Greek method, with symbols placed over the text. These days, they're often seen in a 4 staff notation cobbled together from several various medieval notation styles. The Kyrie is an example of this notation.

Eventually, the monks and congregations got tired of singing Ky-ri-e---------------, and decided that it was time to make the texts more interesting. That however, is a story for another day. As always, if you have questions or input, or something you'd like to hear more about, send us a message or leave a comment! Don't forget--the contest is still running. Read about it here! Faith, signing off.