The Rise of Music Through History

Stone-Age Man in the Time of the Forest

There was no music, thousands of years before the dawn of history, in the days when man had to wrestle with the forces of nature for his very survival. He knew nothing of the succession of night and day, nor of the sequence of the seasons, nor of thunder, lightning, and rain; and so he explained these natural phenomena in a way that suited the mysteriousness of things as they appeared to him at first sight. He imagined that the trees, the sun, the rain, the animals, the birds, and fire were inhabited by evil gods and good ones, and to please these gods, or ward off the evil of those gods' anger, he would hold prayers for them. If one of the savages wished to please the god of the sun, or of the wind, or of the rain, he would summon the members of his tribe to hold a prayer to that god, and they would dance the dance peculiar to him; and when he wanted food, he would resort to acting out the story of the hunt. And so on...

Music Is Man's Communing with His God

All the arts — music, dance, poetry, writing, and drawing — grew from this foundation, when man communed with his gods, either to ask some favor or to thank them for some blessing. But what were the means man used to express this? Without doubt he used his hands and his feet, either by striking them on the ground or striking one against the other, or by swaying his body to left and to right, or forward and back, or by trilling with his voice. Music was the outcome of those movements and sounds — the two pillars on which music rested in its birth and its development.

Let us go further, and call the "cries" that issue from man in his hour of joy "song": we shall then conclude that man knew singing before he knew speech. Those cries — whether the outcome of joy, of grief, or of fear — are nothing but the expression of the emotions stirring in the human soul. And if this is true, then man's first expression of his inner feeling was through music; for song is but one of the forms of music, and music, in actual fact, is nothing but a record of the emotions of mankind, expressed in sounds.

Man Loved Music, So He Set About Making Its Instruments:

The first attempt to make musical instruments was a direct outcome of man's love of song and music, and his eagerness to express his feelings well; for he found that his bodily members were not enough to express the deep feeling stirring in his soul. He then looked about him and saw two pieces of wood; he took hold of them and struck them together gently, keeping time with the beat of his feet on the ground. Then he noticed that if he stretched an animal's hide over a hollow body and tapped the hide with his fingertips, there arose from it a beautiful sound, sweeter in rhythm to the ear. Then he found his way to making whistles from pieces of bone and the branches of trees; then he bound several reeds of different lengths side by side, and noticed the difference in sound between one reed and another — and thus came man's first acquaintance with the musical scale. He noticed, too, that the hide string stretched on the bow he used for hunting animals, if drawn far back and then released, gave a soft sound; and thus he began to use strings of hide in musical instruments.

How Did Music Develop Through the Ages?

Music, once it had taken shape as an art with its own principles, passed through stages that raised it to a high degree of perfection, in style and in instrument. Music first appeared in a form with its own principles, instruments, and ensembles among the ancient Egyptians, who used it in religious ceremonies. From the Egyptians it was taken up by the Greeks and the Hebrews. The Hebrews used it for chanting the Psalms of David, while the Greeks used it for every side of their life; and music among the Romans did not differ greatly from the music of the Greeks.

When Christianity spread through the world, its first followers were Jews and Romans, and so, in chanting their religious hymns, they drew upon what they had learned of the Greek melodies.

The Debt Music Owes to the Poets of Greece, France, and Germany:

The turning point in music came by way of the folk music and folk song, which expressed truthfully the hopes of the peoples, their sorrows, and their joys. The torch of this new movement was carried by the singing poets, and history tells us that Homer the Greek was the first poet of this kind: he would chant the verses describing the wars of Troy, extolling the courage of the Greek soldiers.

This movement took organized shape on a wide scale in the Middle Ages at the hands of the "troubadours" in France and the "Minnesingers" in Germany, who composed the verses they sang to the accompaniment of a musical instrument and wandered from place to place. This activity lay outside the fold of the Church, which had adopted the free choral chant, and which, by the effort of the Italian musicians, was able to carry it to its summit. As for the choral melody outside the Church, it took organized form in the Italian opera, which appeared at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

The Age of Bach Marked the Beginning of the Renaissance and of Stability:

The development of instruments left its mark on composition. Among the first fruits of this renaissance were Handel and Bach. We may say that the age of Bach was an age of transition in which many things settled that had been unknown. With Bach's death dawned the Classical age, which took Austria as its capital and seat. Among the masters of this period were Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, who represents the connecting link with the Romantic age. The masters of that age, besides Beethoven, were Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, and Berlioz.

The revolutions and wars that took place in the nineteenth century had their effect not only on systems of government and the peoples' way of life, but on their thinking and their art as well. Music was affected by these revolutionary movements, as were the other arts, and their imprint is reflected in the music of Dvořák and Rimsky-Korsakov. Folk music, too, found great favor, and made its way into the compositions of many, such as Tchaikovsky and others.