ANTIQUITY TO 1590
Copyright 1999, John Koopman. Conservatory of Music, Lawrence
University, Appleton, WI
PREHISTORIC VOCALISM
In the beginning was the voice. Voice is sounding breath, the
audible sign of life.
--Ibid.
Men sang out their feelings long before they were able to speak
their thoughts. But of course we must not imagine that "singing"
means exactly the same thing here as in a modern concert hall.
When we say that speech originated in song, what we mean is
merely that our comparatively monotonous spoken language and
our highly developed vocal music are differentiations of primitive
utterances, which had more in them of the latter than of the
former. These utterances were, at first, like the singing of birds
and the roaring of many animals and the crooning of babies,
exclamative, not communicative--that is, they came forth from an
inner craving of the individual without any thought of any fellowcreatures. Our remote ancestors had not the slightest notion that
such a thing as communicating ideas and feelings to someone else
was possible.
--Otto Jespersen, Language, Its Nature, Development and Origin
Singing, the vocal production of musical tones, is so basic to man
its origins are long lost in antiquity and predate the development
of spoken language. The voice is presumed to be the original
musical instrument, and there is no human culture, no matter how
remote or isolated, that does not sing. Not only is singing ancient
and universal, in primitive cultures it is an important function
associated not so much with entertainment or frivolity as with
matters vital to the individual, social group, or religion. Primitive
man sings to invoke his gods with prayers and incantations,
celebrate his rites of passage with chants and songs, and recount
his history and heroics with ballads and epics. There are even
cultures that regard singing as such an awesome act they have
creation myths relating that they were sung into existence.
It is likely the earliest singing was individualistic and
improvisatory, a simple imitation of the sounds heard in nature.
At what point the singing of meaningful, communicative sounds
began cannot be established, but it was doubtless an important
step in the creation of language. Many anthropologists believe the
development of a lowered larynx (important to articulate speech,
as it effectively makes the flexible lower tongue the front wall of
the pharynx) was a relatively recent aspect of human evolution.
There are no bones in the human larynx, so archaeological
remains offer no direct physical evidence of the vocal apparatus
of prehistoric man. We lack studies that correlate vocal
characteristics to body size, the basic gender difference aside, but
there is general belief large-bodied peoples (Slavs, for example)
frequently produce low-voiced singers, while small-bodied
peoples (Mediterraneans, for example) produce more high-voiced
singers. If there is any validity in this, the voice that belonged to
the owner of the prehistoric jaw bone unearthed in 1909, at
Heidelberg, Germany, may have been remarkable--it is half-again
the size of a modern jaw.
Carrying the idea of relating body size to vocalism into more
recent periods, we see modern man has grown too large to fit the
armor of medieval knights and, still more recently, we suspect an
increasing rarity of the male alto voice type. Tempting though it is
to see a relationship between such things, we lack the means to
support it factually.
Based on our knowledge of the singing of present-day primitive
peoples, a possible scenario of musical development would begin
with simple melodic patterns based on several tones. Pitch
matching (several persons singing in unison) might emerge next,
with singing in parallel motion (the natural result of women or
children singing with men), call-and-answer phrases, drone basses
and canon as subsequent steps. All this could lead to an evolving
sense of tonic and scale structure (primitive music often uses
pentatonic scales) and the development of such basic musical
devices as melodic sequences and cadential formulae. HISTORICAL ANTIQUITY
The major early cultures that were sources for Western music
each had distinguishing musical characteristics that related, in
some degree, to their respective languages. Experts recognize that
a culture's spoken language and its musical expression influence
each other, but the relationship is very complex and not well
understood. That modern French woodwind players produce a
distinctive timbre, that 6/8 metrics are nonexistent in Hungarian
folksong, and that Western classical vocal technique developed in
an Italian-speaking region are examples of the relationship.
It is not known when or where art music--as distinct from folk
music--began, but there is evidence the various Mesopotamian
cultures that thrived from 3500 to 500 B.C. already considered
music an art, and their writings mention both professional
musicians and liturgical music. It is a song, the Sumerian Hymn to
Creation, dated before 800 B.C., which is the oldest notated
music extant.
Egyptian musical culture existed by the 4th millennium B.C., and
music was prominent in the social and religious life of the Old
Kingdom. Egyptian instruments changed significantly as the New
Kingdom era (1700-1500 B.C.) began. The change, which may
have reflected foreign influence, was from delicate timbre
instruments to louder ones and was surely followed by similar
changes in singing tone for, over time, a culture's instrumental
timbres and vocal tone always tend to match. There are many
drawings extant showing that large choruses and orchestras
existed in the New Kingdom.
Grecian culture had a highly developed art music that showed
signs of both a folk music origin and some Egyptian influence.
The poetry of Sappho (600 B.C.) and others was often sung in
contests, with melodies and rhythms based on the poetic meters.
Singing was associated with all forms of literature and with dance.
The ode, the dithyramb (a choral tribute to Bacchus and the
forerunner of tragedy), and the drama all employed singers who
moved to the rhythm of the music. By 500 B.C. ventriloquism had
been described, and both choruses and solo voices were being
used in drama. Greek philosophers attached great value to music
and to its cultural purposes. The PYTHAGOREAN SCALE (see
Glossary) and a complex theory of music were developed.
The Judaic culture has preserved some melodies that may go back
to 500 B.C. The Psalms of David and the Song of Solomon were
sung, and we know of an early presence of professional musicians.
Both responsorial (a soloist answered by the congregation) and
antiphonal (alternating congregational groups) styles were used in
singing the Psalms. After the destruction of the Second Temple,
in 70 A.D., Jewish music became exclusively vocal. As the
dispersed and transient Jews would learn, the human voice is a
readily portable instrument, and communal singing serves to bond
its participants in both form and purpose. Like the Egyptians,
Jewish singers may have shared musical directions and reminders
with hand-signs (CHEIRONOMY). Cantillation, the intoning of
sacred texts using ancient melodic formulae, written with symbols
called ta'amim, was an important musical format. Jewish prayer
chants, which were based on ancient melodic lines and often
highly ornamented, would have a considerable influence on
Christian plainchant.
What little we know of Roman music shows it to have been
derived from the Greeks but primarily instrumental and military
in nature. Still, Seneca (4 B.C.-64 A.D.) wrote of being disturbed
late one night by loud sounds coming from a group of singers
practicing vocal exercises.
Singing was such an important part of early Christian worship
that its ritual and music developed together and became almost
inseparable. It borrowed music from other religions and from
existing secular tunes and slowly developed a form of liturgical
chant. It was a style based on sinuous melodies of limited range,
expressed in free, unmetered rhythms. These were sung as solos
or in unison by unaccompanied male voices. The various scale
formats in which they developed were eventually refined into a
complex theoretical system of so-called church modes.
As the Christian church became organized it tried to suppress
secularism and secular singing while advancing both itself and its
chosen musical style--plainchant. As a result, little evidence
remains of the secular musical activity during the early centuries
A.D., and we can more easily follow the evolution of singing as it
is reflected in the development of sacred music, specifically that
of the Latin-speaking Roman Church. THIRTEEN CENTURIES OF SACRED MUSIC
In the fourth century A.D., Christianity became established as the
official religion of the Roman Empire and a SCHOLA
CANTORUM was founded by Pope Sylvester. The Roman
Catholic Church would control the development of Western
music for the next thirteen centuries, a span that saw music
change from simple unison chant to the highly developed
polyphonic choral style of Palestrina. This era was marked by a
recurrent pattern, roughly three centuries in period, when the
reigning Pope, concerned with the purity of the church's music,
would order stylistic retrenchment and place new restraints on the
creativity of those who were prone to elaborate the music of the
MASS.
Three styles of chant melody evolved: syllabic (for clergy and
congregation), neumatic (several notes to a syllable, for
choristers) and melismatic (florid, for soloists). Metricity in either
chant texts or melodies was uncommon, but occurred as early as
the fourth century. About 600 A.D., Pope Gregory (whence
Gregorian chant) reorganized the Schola Cantorum . His reforms
standardized the liturgical repertory and changed the character of
the Christian service from unbridled ecstasy to subdued reverence.
By 800 A.D., the repertory was again being enlarged with newly
created material called TROPES. Plainchant manuscripts are
extant from the ninth century, which was also when the first
known examples of polyphony occurred and the deterioration of
chant began--to continue into the thirteenth century--as its
original simplicity was gradually effaced by the ongoing use of
specialized singers and their introduction of ornamentation and
virtuosic effects (see JUBILUS ). About the tenth century,
musical notation began suggesting pitch movement by placing
symbols above or below a horizontal line and the slow
development of multiple-line staffs began.
In the graphic art of the Middle Ages, singers were often shown
with strained expressions, their furrowed brows, protruding veins
and exaggerated mouth positions suggesting an effortful, possibly
nasal quality--twangy or reedy--like the instrumental colors of the
time. Chaucer, in his fourteenth century Canterbury Tales,
described singing of the time as being 'intoned through the nose'.
Straight tone was the probable norm, with vibrato being reserved
for use as an ornament, as were a stock of ancient vocal devices:
portamenti, turns, trills, and the intentional use of the qualities of
the various vocal registers. The yodel was probably used as well.
THE RISE OF POLYPHONY
The idea of high and low pitched voices arose with the coming of
polyphony in the ninth century. As polyphony developed in
complexity, better educated singers were required, and one of the
training devices created (by Guido D'Arezzo, 11th century) was
the Guidonian Hand, the basis of a sightreading technique,
SOLMIZATION, still used today. By the eleventh century,
portamenti were being used on certain consonants in chant
performance and the singing of descants had begun. These were
elaborations performed against a cantus firmus, the protracted
notes of a plainchant melody. Those who sustained the prolonged
notes were called 'holders' or tenors, while those who sang the
descant part 'against' them were called contratenors. The
contratenors often sang the 'high' part, eventually called the altus ,
and, later, those who sang a part intertwining with the altos were
named--predictably--contraltos. Eventually these parts were
surrounded by two outer contrapuntal voices, appropriately
named sopranus (above) and bassus (below).
Organum was the name given to early polyphony (800-1250
A.D.). Simple organum used two voice parts that sang in parallel
fourths or fifths and eventually these two voices were doubled at
the octave. Free organum (11th-12th centuries) employed an
expanded harmonic vocabulary, allowing perfect fourths, major
and minor thirds and the major second, while fifths and semitones
were avoided. Parallel, oblique and contrary motion and crossing
voices were increasingly used to obtain pleasing harmonies and to
avoid the tritone, which was held to be 'the devil in music'. As
polyphony developed (14th-17th centuries) rhythmic notation was
introduced. The fourteenth century ars nova (new art) style
developed bolder harmonies, required wider vocal ranges and
used more interesting rhythms (though bar lines would not be
introduced until late in the sixteenth century). Though ever higher
treble voices were needed, the Church could not resign itself to
the use of female voices (proscribed in I Corinthians 14:34) and
turned instead to the increased use of boys with unchanged voices
(putti ). But boys suffered the drawback of having relatively brief
useful careers after their protracted training, and the next step was
to use mature males singing in the falsetto register. The fifteenth
century saw the Council of Trent attempt to restore purity to the
liturgy by outlawing the use of such elaborative material as tropes
and SEQUENCES. It also saw important new activity in the
creation of polyphonic Masses and MOTETS. As the developing
contrapuntal style generated interest in the range and timbre
differences of the lower male voices, the last primary voice-type
term, baritone (Greek for 'weighty sound'), came into use.
Then, from Spain (where Moorish harem-guard eunuchs had been
the probable models), came the first castrati. These were adult
singers whose testicles had been surgically removed before
puberty. (Youthful castration stabilized the infantile larynx and
resulted in the development of an unusually large rib cage. Both
soprano and alto voices resulted.) A castrato first joined the putti
and falsettists (now called contraltini ) in the Papal Choir late in
the sixteenth century. This was also when the rich polyphonic
choral style of the Renaissance would end--while at its very peak-to be replaced by a revolutionary new musical style centered on
soloistic vocalism: monody. The happenstance that a number of
leading choral composers (Gabrieli, Gesualdo, Guerrero, Hassler,
le Jeune, di Lasso, Merulo, Morley, Nanini, Palestrina and de
Victoria) all died within the span of twenty years (1594-1614),
helps explain the abruptness with which the great polyphonic
choral era ended.
The nuove musiche (new music) style that began the Baroque
period (1600-1750) was homophonic, and featured a melodic line
supported by a vertically conceived harmonic accompaniment.
From our modern vantage point it may be impossible to
appreciate what a remarkable idea this was, but at a time when
music was almost exclusively contrapuntal and each voice was
horizontally conceived and of equal importance to those around it,
it must have been revolutionary.
The homophonic style is typified by the Protestant hymn or
Chorale, and it may have been that the sixteenth-century
Reformation movement--which used vernacular language in
worship and expected its congregational members to participate in
singing during the service--gave impetus to the use of the new,
relatively simple homophony. THE RISE OF THEATRICAL MUSIC
Though their purpose was to recreate ancient Greek drama, the
FLORENTINE CAMERATA effectively established a
completely new manner. Their operas (works) were what we
would consider classical plays, sung throughout in a formless,
text-centered recitative. Yet they altered the history of music by
opening a new venue for musical creativity and performance--the
secular world of the theater. The impact this had on singing was
revolutionary: women's voices could be used, dramatic
expressiveness entered the realm of singing, the skills of moving
and acting while singing had to be learned and the reverberant
acoustic of the church was traded for the less favoring design of
the theater. Also, a new and competitive presence, the
instrumental accompaniment, was developing. The old
unaccompanied style, with its relative ease of emission, would
soon be reserved for use 'in the church'--a cappella. Attending
and heightening this time of artistic disjuncture would be the
fundamental transition from modality to major-minor tonality.
GLOSSARY of terms capitalized in the text.
CHEIRONOMY or CHIRONOMY:
Before the era of musical notation ensemble singing was often
guided by a leader making hand signals to show pitches. A similar
idea, the Curwin Hand Sign System, is in active use today.
FLORENTINE CAMERATA:
A group of artists intellectuals and musicians who, in Florence, at
the end of the sixteenth century, often met to discuss ancient
Greek drama and its performance style.
JUBILUS:
In early plainchant, an ornamental vocalization that was sung on
the final vowel of the word alleluia. It was so popular with
liturgical performers its use survived even the reforms of Pope
Gregory, c. 600.
MASS:
The basic liturgical structure of the Roman Catholic sacred
service and the music that attends it. The Mass developed over
many centuries, and two categories of material came to make up
its form: the Ordinary (items ordinarily present in every Mass)
and the Proper (items inserted when proper to the occasion). Sung
elements of the Ordinary are the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus,
Benedictus and Agnus Dei. In the Proper, such sung sections as
the Introit, Gradual, Alleluia, Offertory and Communion may
occur. Portions of the Mass have been sung in plainchant since
the earliest history of the Church, and for four centuries (1200 to
1600 A.D.) the polyphonic Mass was the primary format for
serious musical composition.
MOTET:
An unaccompanied choral anthem intended for performance in
the Catholic sacred service. It was an important form of
composed music and underwent considerable change during its
long span of active use (1250-1750 A.D.).
PYTHAGOREAN SCALE:
An eight-tone diatonic scale the Greek mathematician Pythagoras
(c. 550 B.C.) created by reordering the tones he derived from a
circle of fifths.
SCHOLA CANTORUM:
A training school for the papal choir in Rome. It became the
center for the development and dissemination of the church's
music and sent out singers to other churches.
SEQUENCES:
The oldest and most important form of TROPE, originally
occurring on the alleluia of the Mass. Unlike older chant, this
newly created material often used expanded vocal ranges and
formal compositional devices such as melodic sequence.
SOLMIZATION:
A music reading method that associates syllables (do, re, mi, etc.)
with pitches of the diatonic scale. Many ancient cultures had
developed similar systems before this one was created for use in
teaching sightreading to monks.
TROPES:
A textual addition to the official Catholic liturgy. Some were
adapted to preexisting melismas (hence contrafacta ) but others
were sung to new melodies freely derived from the plainchant
melody.
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