Music: How it all began

You probably have heard of music sung in

church, or even sang in a church choir yourself.
Have you ever wondered how the music of church
came to be? The whole story is too long to be told
at once, but the very basis of all “modern” music
began with the fall of the Roman empire. Without
the fall of this empire, the “classical” music we hear now, like opera, might have
been sung in Greek or Latin!

MOST MIGHT OR not know that the earliest

forms of music started in the ancient Greek and
Roman empires. This is where the basis for our
modern church music came from.
However, Greek and Roman music was very
different from church music. The reason our
music evolved to be so different from theirs is
thanks to the medieval age.
The reason for that is because when the Roman
empire fell, people began to burn many “Roman” Later influence?
things, which included music, to fully destroy The legacy left behind by
any remains of the Roman empire. Only the most Roman and Greek modes,
called scales, influenced
basic musical practices survived, though secret
some of the most famous
books and ancient relics kept safe underground. composers in the world,
The most prominent remains of Roman and including Johann Sebastian
Bach, Antonio Vivaldi and
Greek music were rather primitive ancient
George Fredrick Handel.
versions of scales called modes. Those modes would With these scales, many
gradually evolve into the musical scales we often famous works were written, including the 2
hear now, during what we now call the “Baroque” books of the “Well-tempered Clavier”, which
featured a prelude and fugue for every major
era, which went from about 1600 to 1750. and minor scale.
GREGORIAN
CHANTS
Eventually, in the 900’s,
music started making its
comeback, in the form of
hymns and chants for
worship practices. These
chants were used in worship
ceremonies in church. These
chants had very basic
melodies, with everyone
singing the same tune. (This
style of song is called
‘monophony’, which is Latin
for “one melody”) The lyrics of these songs
were sung Latin, parts taken from the
original old Testament. Music had not
developed so far as to have a way of notating
rhythm, or even to have a
proper system of rhythm, so
people sang them according
to how they thought it should
be sung.
We know roughly what these
Gregorian chants sounded
like, due to the people of that
time having developed a very
basic way of notating notes,
called “neumes”. These would later develop
into the musical notes we often see now.
Soon after music made its comeback, many
different churches started composing their
own chants. After a while, these new chants
became so numerous, people couldn’t keep
track of them. This became a
problem, and the Pope of that
time, Pope Gregory I, or
Gregory the great sought a
way to solve this problem.
Pope Gregory created a way
of cataloging the chants with
the help of some advisors.
Pope Gregory cataloged all
the chants of that time, and
named them ‘Gregorian
Chants’ after he who had
catalogued them. These
chants would later become the
basis of all modern vocal music.
What are Neumes?
Neumes were the earliest forms of written
music. If you look at sheet
music now, you will see a five-
lined staff and oval markings
that show the notes. This is
the legacy of neumes; the
modern music scale. However,
what did neumes look like?
Neumes, which was developed
during the middle ages, were
diamond shaped markings placed on a 4 lined
staff. These markings showed the pitch of the
notes, but not the rhythm. Rhythm would be
developed during the early renaissance.

ORGANUM
As Gregorian Chants became more and more
common, more people began to
know about them. People started to wonder
about the chants. Could they improve
the dull, boring chants? Was there anything
to make them more
interesting?c
Gregorian chants,
although very
widespread and
numerous, were
rather boring. They
had only one long,
continuous melody
where everyone sang the same thing, and no
rests between words. Without any rhythm or
harmony, there was nothing to brighten the
chants up. This boringness was what
prompted people to want to improve the
chants. These people sought to improve them
by adding more lines of different melodies to
the chants.
These new songs still sang about the same
things as the original chants, and still had the
same name, but they had added harmony
and some form of rhythm. The original tunes
were still there, but often slowed down until it
was nothing but a slow drone, while a faster,
higher melody sang a different melody above
it. The original tunes used in these new songs
were called the ‘Clausulae’.
Quickly, these new songs became so numerous
they couldn’t be simply classified as ‘songs’
anymore; They became a completely new
genre, later named ‘Organum’. This way of
writing songs for 2 or more voices became
known as ‘polyphony’, which would
eventually become the
basis of church
choirs.
As a result of
organum, music
became something
much more
appealing to peoples’
tastes, as it was so
much more interesting than a single line of
melody. Organum also
prompted the formation of the first music
‘schools’, which were mostly catholic church
groups where many intellectuals who wished
to compose music or to enjoy music would
gather together. Notable schools included the
Notre Dame school and the Franco Flemish
school, both in old France (The Franco-
Flemish school would be in now day
Belgium).
In these schools, organum flourished. People
from these schools made
major contributions to the development of
organum, and music in general. For example
forming called ‘Leonin the Great’, and others would
different call him the father of organum. Another
sub-genres great achievement of Leonin was that he was
within the perhaps the first person to use rhythmic
organum modes in his pieces, and if he wasn’t, he
genre, like might have developed a way to notate
discant rhythm.
style and
Perotin was
organel style, and also many part organum,
another
as opposed to the typical 2 voice.
prominent
Many people contributed to the development composer. He
of organum, but the 2 most prominent figures lived later than
in developing organum were Léonin and Leonin,
Pérotin, both of the Notre roughly
Dame school. around
the 12th
century. He
The Magum Liber
was the The “Magnum
LEONIN AND PEROTIN perhaps the Liber”, or “Great
The 2 most prominent figures in developing most famous book” is where we
the organum genre were Leonin and Perotin. member of the get most of our
Both of these composers came from the Notre Notre Dame knowledge of
Dame school of southern France, which was school, and Medieval music
one of the most prominent musical schools of wrote
from. It contains
the time. most notably Léonin
polyphonic
and Pérotin’s works.
pieces and in
Leonin (1150s — 1201) was a composer of This book shows us a
the ars development from
organum in the 12-13th century, and perhaps
antiqua style simple Gregorian
the first noted writer of organum. He
(Ars Antiqua is chants to many part
developed 2 to 3 part organum, in which was
used to refer to organi. (‘Organi’ is
the the plural for
music of the
most basic form of organum. In a letter ‘Organum’.)
middle ages,
written by a composer to a friend, he was
before the
fourteenth
century).
One of the
most
prominent
features in
his music
was how he
took a well
known
clausulae, like a Gregorian Chant and
stretched it out until it was almost a drone
while a faster livelier melodies would be sung
above it, often intertwining around each
other. These lively melodies the higher voices
sang were called discants. He included more
voices than his predecessor Leonin, his
organum containing up to four voices.
Although many works of those times were lost,
many works of these two composers were
preserved in the Magnum Liber, of ‘The
great book’. This book is where most of our
knowledge of medieval music came from.
Many pieces of Lèonin and Pèrotin were
included in this treatise.
As the middle ages transformed into the
renaissance, many changes emerged. The
typical Ars Antiqua style of the middle ages
began to be taken over by the Ars Nova
movement, led by Phillip de Vitry. (This
movement changed many of the most basic
features of the middle ages music. For
example, the only 3-beat rhythm trend of the
middle ages began to dissolve.) Old genres
such as organum and Gregorian chants were
overtaken by new genres, such as secular
songs (Songs sung out of church). Music
emerged in instruments, and henceforth in
dance. Of
course, it still
remained in
church, where
it first emerged.
Over about a
thousand or so
years, music
has evolved
into what we
hear now days
on our i-Pods
and phones.
FUN FACTS
1. Organum was popular for only about 200
years, roughly 400 years less than
Gregorian Chants, yet left a much larger
legacy on the development of music.
2. Sometimes, the notes in the Cantus firmus
of some organum can last up to 400
seconds.
3. Many pieces of organum were for masses,
which was a type of music that remained
popular even into the present. Beethoven,
Mozart, Bach all wrote at least one piece
in this sub-genre.
Citations:

Todd M. McComb “What is Early Music?” Medieval.org, Miscellaneous June 1, 1995, edited
July 2, 1999

This website gives a well written, however rather basic history of music after the fall of
the Greek

and Roman Empires. The information is well researched and put in an easy to read
format.

Robert Sherrane “Music History 102: A Guide to Western Composers and their Music ” Ipl2.org
Special

Collections 2009

The Guide is very focused on a certain period in music history, and would be very useful
to those

That are researching the Ars Nova period in music history. Some essential background
information

Is also given so that the reader is not confused.

“The Beginning of Modern Music- Léonin and Pérotin” Hubpages.com- Entertainment and
Media, Music,

History of Music 2012

This webpage gives almost all of the currently known information on the 2 composers
Léonin and

Pérotin that we currently know put into 1 page, and also explains thoroughly the type of
music they

wrote, along with explanations of musical styles.