Categories
Cultural and Creative Arts Notes

History Of Music

SUB-TOPICS

  1. Origin of Music.
  2. Meaning of Sound.
  3. Characteristics of Sound.
  4. Meaning of Rhythm and Intervals.

ORIGIN OF MUSIC

Music emerged from the following sources namely-

  1. HAMMER AND ANVIL: Sound is observed when a blacksmith uses hammer and anvil to beat hot metal into a desired shape.
  2. BIRD SOUND: A variety of sounds is observed among birds as they move from one place to another.
  3. SINGING: Sound is produced when two people come together to make a composed tune.
  4. RHYTHM:Sound is produced in form of rhythm. Rhythm is simply the movement or flow of musical sound. Rhythm is achieved in music when there is an orderly arrangement or flow of notes, beats, bar, accent and phrases. The flow of music can be in the Double time(Duple)(2) ,Triple time (3) and quadruple time (4)
  5. CLAPPING:Sound is produced when humans clap their hands. Clapping produces a rhythmic flow in music and can flow easily to various clapping patterns.
  6. SOUND: Raw sound can be transformed into good music when it is well organized.
  7. HUMAN VOICE: The human voice is a useful medium through which sound is produced before musical instruments are introduced.
  8. ROARING OF OCEAN WAVES: Sound is observed around a water body as heavy wind blows water from one place to another.

MEANING OF SOUND:

Sound is simply what we hear through the ear. Various sounds are produced in our immediate environment which we can clearly hear through our ear. It can be in form of music, vibration and noise. Sound is both organized and disorganized. An organized sound is music which pleases the ear while a disorganized sound is noise which is unpleasant to the ear.

EVALUATION

  1. Mention three sources of music.
  2. What is sound?

CHARACTERISTICS OF SOUND

They include the following:

  1. TIMBRE (Sonic qualities of timbre): Timbre is the quality of sound or colour of a sound .This is observed in terms of the different sounds that various musical instruments or one musical instrument can create. For instance, the musical sound of a saxophone differs completely from the sound of a guitar. In its deepest form, timbre also emphasizes the different sounds that one musical instrument can create.
  2. RHYTHM: This is the note of durations that are organized into patterns.
  3. DYNAMICS: This has to do with the changes in volume of musical sounds which can be immediate or gradual of time.
  4. INTENSITY: This is the loudness and softness of musical sound. Musical sound with high intensity is loud while musical sound with low intensity is soft.
  5. DURATION: This is the amount of time musical sound expressed through the application of musical notes, beat and other elements in a piece of music last .
  6. PITCH: This is the highness and lowness of musical sound in a piece of music. It is the height or depth of musical sound. The pitch of sound is relatively high or low.
  7. TEXTURE:This is the relationship of lines or voices in musical sound. Lines or voices form layers of sound which can be monophonic, polyphonic and homophonic.
  8. MELODY: This is a sequence of single notes that form musical sound; the main, most prominent line or voice in a piece of music is the line or voice that the listener follows most closely. 
  9. HARMONY: This is a succession of chords .Chords are two or more notes that played together at the same time to make musical sounds.
  10. FORM: This is the order of events in a piece of music that make up musical sound. Form is the number of sections and their relationship to each other and to a whole. In today’s music, sections often have evenness and symmetrical like quality as music pieces balance between contrast and repetition. 

MEANING OF RHYTHM AND INTERVAL

  1. Rhythm is the flow of musical sounds that are well arranged and organized.
  2. Interval is the tonal gap between two notes. Interval can also be defined as the distance in pitch between two notes.

SUB-TOPICS

  1. Musical Textures: Monophony and polyphony
  2. Periods of Music Development: Baroque period ,classical period, romantic period ,modern period
  3. Forms of Music: Binary, unitary, ternary, rondo etc.

MUSICAL TEXTURES

  1. MONOPHONY:In music,monophony is the simplest of musical textures, consisting of a melody or tune typically sung by a single singer or played by a single singer. For example, a flute player without accompanying harmony or chords .Many folk songs and traditional songs are monophonic.
  • POLYPHONY:In music, polyphony is one type of musical texture where a texture is generally speaking the way melodic rhythmic and harmonic aspects of a musical composition are combined to shape the overall sound and quality of the work.In particular, polyphony consists of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with one voice(monophony or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords, which is called homophony.

PERIODS OF MUSIC DEVELOPMENT

  1. BAROQUE ERA (1600AD-1750AD): Baroque music is the style of western art music.The harpsichord, a keyboard instrument in which pressing the keys caused a quill to pluck the strings, was an improvement Baroque era instrument which was used both in accompaniment and solo roles. A double- manual (two keyboard)harpsichord after Claude Goujon(1749).
  • CLASSICAL ERA (1750AD-1820AD): Classical music is the art music produced or rooted in traditions of western music including both liturgical (religious), social aspects and so on.
  • ROMANTIC ERA: This is an era of western classical music that began in the late 18th or early 19th century.It was related to Romanticism, the European artistic and literary movement that arose in the second half of the 18th century,and Romantic music in particular dominated the Romantic Movement in Germany.In the Romantic period, music became more expressive and emotional, expanding to encompass literary, artistic and philosophical themes.Famous early Romantic composers include- Schumann,Chopin, Mendelssohn,Bellini, and Berlioz.
  • MODERN ERA: This is the period of change and development in musical language that occurred around the turn of the 20thcentury,a period of diverse reactions and reinterpreting older categories of music,innovations that led to new ways of organizing and approaching harmonic,melodic, sonic and rhythmic aspects of music and changes in aesthetic worldviews in close relation to the larger identifiable period of modernism in the arts of the time.

EVALUATION

  1. State the kind of music that developed during the romantic era.
  2. Discuss briefly onthe music texture ‘monophony’.

FORMS OF MUSIC

1. BINARY FORM:It is a two part form. It is a musical form comprising two related sections whose parts are repeated. A basic musical form having two closely related sections.  It follows a pattern of A //B//.

2. TERNARY FORM:It is also called song form. It is a three part musical form where the first section (A) is repeated after the second section (B) ends. It is usually schematized A-B-A. An example is the Da Capo Aria; The Trumpet shall sound from Handel’s Messiah.

3. RONDO FORM: It is a musical form with recurring leading theme often found in the final movement of a sonata or concerto.

4. UNITARYFORM:This is one unrepeated section of a piece of music. The notes that make up a tune in unitary form of music are not repeated in another section. The word unitary means songs that were not changed in tune.It flows continuously.

EVALUATION
  1. List the forms of music.
  2. Discuss binary form of music.

GENERAL EVALUATION

  1. What is the duty of the costumier?
  2. Describe the audience in drama and theatre.

READING ASSIGNMENT

Cultural and Creative Art (New Edition) by Peter Akinyemi& Co-Authors. (Book 2)

REFERENCE PAGE –Visit the internet.

WEEKEND ASSIGNMENT

  1. ……………..….refers to one voice or line.(a) Monophonic  (b) Polyphonic  (c)Rondo  (d) Homophonic
  2. A form of music with many voices is called ……….(a) monophonic  (b) polyphonic (c) rondo  (d) homophonic
  3. …….….refers to two notes that are played at the same time thereby moving in the same rhythm. (a) Timbre  (b) Intensity  (c) Chord  (d) Pitch
  4. …………….…refers to a melody with simple accompaniment. (a) Monophonic (b)Polyphonic  (c) Homophonic  (d) Rondo
  5. A piece of music in the binary form comprises of ………..………….sections or parts. (a) three (b) two  (c)  four  (d)  five

THEORY

  1. How many parts make up a piece of music in the ternary form?
  2. What period did the baroque period in the history of musicbegan and ended?

EVALUATION

  1. Mention two features of sound.
  2. Explain rhythm and interval respectively.

GENERAL EVALUATION

  1. What is music?
  2. Differentiate between music and noise.

READING ASSIGNMENT

Cultural and Creative Art (New Edition) by Peter Akinyemi& Co-Authors.(Book 2)

REFERENCE PAGE-Visit the internet.

WEEKEND ASSIGNMENT

  1. The highness and lowness of musical sound is called ………….…(a)pitch  (b) chord  (c)timbre  (d) intensity
  2. A sound that is irregular and disorganized when heard through our ear is called ………….………. (a) music (b) noise  (c) Option a & b  (d) None of the above.
  3. The interval between the root note and the top note which comprises of eight notes is the …………..(a) 1st interval  (b) 8th interval (c) 2nd interval  (d) Unison
  4. A semibreve is a musical note the relative  value  ……………………….  (a) 1    (b) 1/4  (c) 1/8    (d) 1/16
  5. In music, the word octave stands for the number ………….. (a) 2  (b) 4 (c) 8  (d) 6

THEORY

  1. What is interval?
  2. Define sound.

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