Information about music history and theory every parent should know.

[HH]

Hi, guys!

I am sitting in NY here, meeting with potential investors. Yesterday we had more constructive conversation with Chris Salter, and I realized, that many people has little to no knowledge about how music literacy came to existence, how all of it was developed during all of this years and how it influenced culture and our lives, and now is effecting lives of our kids.

‘…After 5000 years, you can't get rid of it ( *music notation* HH) no matter how illogical it is.’ Chris Salter

The Grand Staff, music notes, their names were created just 1000 years ago by a monk Gvido from Arezzo (991/992 – after 1033) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guido_of_Arezzo . It is very logical, but its logic hadn't been discovered 'till now.

I will explain about this invention a little later. First, we have to understand, how people managed without it.
Humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years, but didn’t achieve a developed and rich musical language all at once. The first works appeared long before music literacy. They passed from one rule to another, and were very simple and not too thought-out.

History hasn’t accurately preserved a single melodic saga or score that accompanied the Greek Tragedies. From the epoch before musical literacy, only folklore has been preserved – short compositions, limited in volume and plain in substance.

Think, for example, of the holiday song "Carol of the Bells." It is likely that this melody is several thousand years old, derived from an ancient Ukrainian folk chant, "Shchedryk" (picked up and arranged by Ukrainian composer Leontovich in 19th century)  The four-note melody was made simple for the sake of repetition, and has thus survived in the villages of Ukraine for ages.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/tcqdtgoqaYg&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/tcqdtgoqaYg&rel=1</a>

[HH]

Because it couldn’t be written down, it wasn’t possible to preserve more complex pieces with accuracy; they changed and slipped away, like sand through the fingers.

People constantly tried to find ways to record musical notation.

They came up with all sorts of lines and symbols. Ancient Greeks used letters to write out the sounds of music,

Russian monks used names and hooks, (they were placed above the words) http://www.vokrugsveta.ru/telegraph/theory/159/

and European Monks used neumes, which are individual signs that are representative of different sounds. http://www.edwardschaefer.net/catholic_church_music/teaching_aids/chant/chant_details.htm

Yet all of these symbols only gave a general idea of the melody. They couldn’t communicate the exact notes, the clear correlation of the melody, nor the concrete tune or rhythms to be sung.

[HH]

t happened in a small Italian town called Arezzo, where there once lived a monk named Guido. Guido did not like common ways of writing music. Indeed, nobody would like the fact that different sounds are written as one line and the duration of the sounds cannot be easily determined.

Guido was a genius. His idea was simple but straightforward: he invented lines. First, there were only four of them and they were colored differently for better recognition. At the time Guido was a conductor of a small church choir. Since the range of the human voice is rather moderate, Guido did well with the four line music staff. Nowadays we use at least ten lines, so that we can better represent the piano range or even hundreds of lines for orchestra notes. The human voice did not need that many lines, and Guido started with four. His next thought was about the names of the notes. He found help in a prayer.

The biggest problem of the monastery choir was the hoarseness of the monks' voices. While singing at weddings and funerals, the monks highly cherished the clarity of the voice and tried to sing both the Gregorian chants and the madrigals in honor of the Virgin Mary as clearly as possible. That is the reason for the enormous popularity of a prayer to St John in which the monks asked St John to get rid of the hoarseness of the voice. The prayer was sung in Latin. Each of its phrases would start with the next higher note, like this - Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La.

UT queant laxis
REsonare fibris
MIra gestorum
FAmuli tuorum
SOLve polluti
LAbii reatum
Sancte Ioannes.

 Guido based his note name system on these syllables, thus attributing to each note a name better suited for the human voice. ALMOST better suited. "Ut sounded too coarse for the musically sophisticated Italians and was transformed to a more convenient "Do" several centuries later.

Where did the Si come from? (Si is called Ti in the United States for the sake of clarity, so that C and Si would not get confused.) Si is an abbreviation of the name Saint Ioannus, the prayer to whom has turned to be the basis for the Solfeggio music system.

[HH]

This was a true revolution! If not for this genius invention, symphonies, sonatas, operas, and ballets wouldn’t have been a possibility. In just this way, our consciousness is built on the appearance of a written language from which thought can develop. Language is the capture of human thought. After a person writes down an idea, he can examine it, rethink it, complete it, develop it, and, most importantly, pass it on to others.

Literacy is the focal point for the development of any idea. When we pass it along vocally, a centrifugal force prevails; one wants to preserve the source, the original idea. Writing develops the centripetal force, helping to better the original and to attain new results.

Having learned to write down music, people began to study and develop the language further. The first schools were established in monasteries and churches and called Ars Nova http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ars_nova. There, the best tunes were examined, worked out, and painstakingly recorded. Music compositions became more complex and improved. Descendants read the music of their fathers and added something of their own to it. In this way, from the Gregorian chants of monks, European music came to Bach’s fugues, cantatas, and masses, and then the sonatas and symphonies of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.

Advanced musical thought has nothing to do with simple repetitive melodies, and is extraordinarily dynamic in its own development and imagination. Working with an advanced musical language demands a huge amount of intellect. One needs a developed memory, creative mind, concentration, the ability to focus one’s attention, a balance of the emotional and abstract perceptions, developed logic, and a sense of balance between the right and left hemispheres of the brain.

[HH]

Music notation has needed an update for a long time, it was obsolete but people just kept "adding on" until it became the mess it is today. That being said, it is like Chinese characters. Chris Salter

Music notation had never been obsolete - it is the most sophisticated, accurate and organized way to write music down and read it.  The only problem with teaching/learning it is our approach to its format.

In fact, we had the same approach in learning how to read and write ‘till pretty recent.

Here is a quote from the book "Education in the Netherlands: History and Contemporaneity," by the well-known historian Nan Dodde:

"The early stage of education in the parish schools for boys and girls from the age of 7 to 10 years old was entirely based on memorization. Books were extremely expensive, and reading was accessible to few. The majority of students couldn’t read after three years of education. Reading… was taught letter by letter, word by word. Teachers showed cards with letters, syllables and words… The students mentally connected the sounds and letters and named them out loud.

…The rule of medieval education was to first memorize texts, then later to understand them. This didn’t only affect reading by words and elementary reading, but also advanced reading. The evidence of the ability to read was expressed in the reading of works of classical authors such as Cicero. Fragments of the works of these authors were also supposed to be committed to memory. The memory of a pupil served him as his own personal library."

Ground breaking change in fighting literacy was invention of ABC. ABC with pictures was invented by Comeniushttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Amos_Comenius , but people started to use it widely much later, when motivation to become literate increased with technology growth.

I recommend every parent and especially teacher/educator carefully read and study works of this greatest master in pedagogy! His didactic ruls is a very foundation of the most effective learning of all the subjects: http://www.amazon.com/Great-Didactic-Comenius-M-Keatinge/dp/0922802807

[ChrisSalter]

Again, Hellene and I are in broad agreement, in fact we just released another free Ebook "Is Music a Birthright" that touches on many of the same things she is talking about here, about the origins of music notation. Here is the link, and we again did this kind of sharing in parallel without really knowing the other would as well, but it again dovetails into similar conclusions. Here is the link for those looking for it.

http://www.brillkids.com/ext/partners/ebook-free-download-2.php

We have had some spirited discussion in this forum, with lots of curiosity and different points of view. We don't shrink from that, we hope to learn from it and take the best ideas and bring those tools to our homes to help our children grow.

With that in mind, we shared the free report on "Is Music a Birthright?" that gives some perspective the challenges of learning music, and their roots, some of which was brought out in our discussions. SoftMozart has some similar, more in depth articles on the origins and challenges of traditional music notation as well, the summary of which you can see in this thread. What I also added, in a different section, to try and give some perspective of the range of approaches and choices, is a series of posts about the four common approaches to learning piano (up to now). I believe that our methods, both Hellene of SoftMozart and Piano Wizard Academy, begin to shape a "fifth way". What is important to appreciate is they were both developed in response to something that was not really working, in the context of the limitations of the other approaches, trying to compensate for those gaps and yet leverage their strengths. Though each method has its advocates and champions, including Hellene and I for our own, and those advocates can be as we have seen quite passionate and compelling, NONE OF THESE APPROACHES IS PERFECT. We do strive to honestly "perfect" our process every day, with more and more knowledge, and this forum has been I think very fruitful in its exploration of the options. Here is my latest contribution to that conversation.

Below is the link to that section of the forum.

http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-child-music/four-common-approaches-to-learning-piano-some-pros-and-cons/msg60967/#msg60967

I don't know how many parents are following all this, but I can tell you if you are, you are now MUCH more knowledgeable about both the challenges of music education, and the pallet of options available, and I hope it helps you all find your own unique solution to your children's needs, and leads to a less dogmatic, more practical, efficient and fun way to bring music into their lives.

[ChrisSalter]

PS

Hellene, did you really cite Comenius? Amazing.

Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia on his work

"These texts were all based on the same fundamental ideas: (1) learning foreign languages through the vernacular; (2) obtaining ideas through objects rather than words; (3) starting with objects most familiar to the child to introduce him to both the new language and the more remote world of objects: (4) giving the child a comprehensive knowledge of his environment, physical and social, as well as instruction in religious, moral, and classical subjects; (5) making this acquisition of a compendium of knowledge a pleasure rather than a task; and (6) making instruction universal. While the formulation of many of these ideas is open to criticism from more recent points of view, and while the naturalistic conception of education is one based on crude analogies, the importance of the Comenian influence in education has now been recognized for half a century. The educational writings of Comenius comprise more than forty titles. In 1802 the three-hundredth anniversary of Comenius was very generally celebrated by educators, and at that time the Comenian Society for the study and publication of his works was formed.[3]"

It says he was also invited to work at Harvard University (founded 1636) but declined. Obviously they knew who he was and how profound and new his approach to education was, so probably his ideas influenced the direction of the "new" university.

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