| Contents |
The origins of music. Music in early society. Theories of the origin of music ; The origin disclosed by the study of early music ; Music begins with singing ; The ecstatic character of early music ; Shamans' songs ; The social character of early music ; Its peculiar singing techniques -- Comparative musicology and its methods. Earlier failure ; The phonograph ; Transcription ; The cents -- Melodic styles. Poetry chanted ; One-tone melodies ; Two-tone melodies ; The Vedda style ; Repetition form ; Symmetry ; Melodies in thirds and fourths ; Earliest evolution ; The contribution of woman ; Further evolution ; The descending style ; Distances and intervals ; Tetrachords and pentachords ; The evolution of early melody mirrored by the babble melodies of European children -- Rhythm and instrumental music. Early rhythm ; Clapping and striking ; Drum rhythms ; Instrumental music -- Polyphony. Parallels ; Drones and heterophony ; Antiphony and canon -- Conclusion -- The western Orient. High civilization and music. Legend, law, and logic ; Castes of musicians ; Musical organization in Egypt, Sumer, and Babylonia ; Music in the Bible ; The Temple in Jerusalem ; Foreigners and musical provinces -- Musical systems in general. Tetrachords and pentachords ; Genus ; Mode and how to recognize it ; Scales ; 'High' and 'low' -- Music in the ancient western Orient. Egyptian scenes ; The up-and-down principle ; Systems read from fingerholes ; Equipartition ; The lutanist in Nakht's tomb ; The divisive principle and the seasons ; "Overtones" ; The singers' wrinkles and hands ; Jewish music ; Crying to God and silent prayer ; Melodic patterns, tropes, and cantillation ; Accents and neumes ; Jewish prosody and rhythm ; Women's songs ; Parallelismus membrorum ; Antiphony and responsorial singing ; Syrian, Armenian, Coptic, and Ethiopian church music ; Polyphony ; Drones ; Harpers' chords -- Conclusion. "The cries of the victims who burned in the glowing arms of Moloch"? -- East Asia. General features. China and Japan ; Vulgar music ; Well-bred music ; Music of the heart ; Music of the single note ; Music of the universe ; Cosmological connotations ; Harmony of the spheres ; Music and measure ; Corrections in music -- The lü's. Ling-lun's errand ; The standard tone ; The lü's ; Kabbala ; Difficulties ; The male and the female ; Ascent and descent ; Japanese parallel -- The scales. The Chinese scales ; Modes ; The Japanese scale ; Major-third pentatonics ; Malayan scales ; Pelog ; Munggang ; Salendro ; Siamese, Cambodian, Burmese scales ; Piens, heptatonics, and major -- Melody and rhythm. The No ; Singing style ; The Daemonic ; Chinese opera ; Speech melody ; Rhythm and form -- Notation. The Bali script ; Tonal notation ; Neumes ; "Guido's hand" ; Tablatures -- Polyphony. Heterophony ; Chords ; Right and left music ; Orchestral polyphony -- Orchestras. Bridges between macrocosm and microcosm ; Gigantic court orchestras ; Foreign orchestras ; Gamelan ; Cambodia and Siam ; The Pwe -- India. The Vedic chant -- Pictorial and literary evidences. The reliefs ; Bharata -- Scales. Notes ; Notation ; Srutis ; Grāmas ; Murchanas -- Rāgas. Melodic patterns ; Law and freedom ; Legends ; Water and fire magics ; Jātis ; Classification ; Hours of the day ; Gamakas ; Quivering ; The art of singing ; Drones -- Rhythm and form. Poetic meter ; Tālas ; The art of drumming ; Alāpa and rāga -- Conclusion. Credit and debit -- Greece and Rome. New orientation -- The sources. Pieces observed ; Treatises preserved ; Misrepresentation -- Notation. Pitch ; Instrumental notation ; Vocal notation -- The genera. Diatonic, chromatic, enharmonic ; The high age of the enharmonion ; Its original form ; Japanese parallel ; Three-stringed lyres -- The shades. The Aristoxenians ; The Ptolemaeans ; Greek music sounded 'Oriental' -- Early modes. Harmonia, the Dorian family ; Phrygian and Lydian ; Again, Japanese parallels ; The pedigree -- The perfect system. The system ; Arrays of keys ; Decline of authentic structure ; Aeolian ; Early Mixolydian ; Cryptic scales ; Tuning of the lyre ; The F series ; The dovetailed systems ; Solmization ; Earlier mistakes -- The relics. Methods of analyzing ; Analyses of the pieces preserved -- Ethos. The problem ; Mode? ; Pitch? ; Rāga-Maqām? ; Dynamo-thetic tension ; Harmonia ; Rāga? -- Health and education. Homeopathy ; Allopathy ; Pedagogics -- Counterpoint? Accompaniment ; Consonance ; Dissonance -- Accents and rhythms. Melic accents ; Metric accents ; Poetic and motor rhythm ; Rhythms preserved ; Rhythmic patterns ; Tempo -- Form. Evolution and stagnation ; Choral forms ; Dithyramb ; Drama ; Soloistic music ; Nomos ; Contests -- Rome -- The Greek heritage in the music of Islam. The "Arabian" style -- Scales and modes. The seven steps ; The seventeen steps ; Inversions and combinations ; Three-quarter tones -- Maqām. Patterns ; Ethos, therapeutics, cosmological connotations -- Rhythm. Meters ; Emancipation from poetry ; Rhythmic patterns ; Drumming ; Polyrhythm -- Polyphony. Heterophony ; Drones ; Ostinato ; Consonance -- Form. Taqsim ; Pesrev ; Nuba -- Europe and the road to major and minor. The harmony of brave hearts and bestial singing ; The gulf between northern and southern music ; The puzzle of medieval tonality ; Chains of thirds ; The Landini sixth ; The Gregorian chant un-Oriental also ; The meaning of our staff notation ; Counterchains ; Major allegedly "Germanic" ; Evolution to major ; The leading note (semitone) and musica ficta ; Ugro-Finnish parallels ; Tendency toward major in Chinese, Indian, Greek, and Islamic music ; The conflict between vocal and instrumental styles ; Frisia non cantat and the neighing mare ; Harmony in instrumental styles ; Rhythm ; Meter and modi. |
| Abstract |
This book is a history of music from ancient times to the middle ages. While other writers have dealt with primitive, Oriental and Hellenic music, they have been limited to certain musical aspects of single countries, of China or India or Greece. Here for the first time is a book that covers all the different, yet closely related, styles of the ancient world in the East and in the West. It is a fascinating synthesis which shows how for thousands of years music has been held in balance between the material and the immaterial, the rational and the irrational. It demonstrates how races living far apart have met in strange parallels in music--the Greeks and the Japanese, Europeans and North American Indians. It gives more distinct outlines to primitive styles, reinterprets Oriental systems, opens an entirely new perspective on Greek music and exposes the roots from which the music of the West has grown. After a comprehensive section on primitive music, the book describes the music of the four great regions of the ancient world, the Western Orient, Egypt, Sumer and Babylonia, the music of China and Japan, the music of India, and Greek and Roman music, concluding with a discussion of the Greek heritage in the music of Islam and the beginnings of mediaeval music in Europe. |
