Quote:
Originally Posted by Andyrondack
You can't understand music by just hearing it either you have to read books too.
Medieval monks wrote music to be be sung by choirs trained to sing early musical notation.
Gregorian chant pre- dated harmony but the melodies were composed using predefined modes, thus church music in the medieval period is considered the begining of music theory in Western history.
Gregorian Chant was sung not just in monasteries but in churches too, if church music influenced secular music and church music was composed and notated by the professionals of the day then it must be true that music theory has influenced traditional music.
If you were not familliar with the traditional Irish song She Moved Through The Fair and you heard it for the first time translated to Latin and sung in a monestery or chuch would you not believe you were listening to Gregorian Chant? Because I would.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3dyUsXgL7ow
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MWIkMu...OAr1bA&index=4 |
Having performed and recorded a TON of early music, sure, your points are mostly correct. But please don't forget that along with "the professionals," there was ALWAYS vernacular (i.e. "folk") music, which of course pre-dated plainsong by, well, by millenia. And for "She moved..." well yes, ok, largely because the tune is modal and it's often performed over a drone. Gives it a pseudo-medieval sound.
Now as I've noted, I'm big on knowing theory, I know a ton of it myself, and use it in many contexts. But I, and probably thousands of others, would vehemently disagree with your proclamation: "You can't understand music by just hearing it either you have to read books too."
I can think of dozens of world class musicians who never read any books.