Re: [Harp-L] history of music theory

[Pierre <slavio@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I had nothing to do tonight so I checked out the origins of music and I
found a bunch of things.

A) The flutes, made of bone and created up to 57,000 years ago, indicate the
importance of music to our cave-dwelling ancestors, explained Atema. "The
musical instruments were more complex than the hunting tools."

B) Wales and bird music have things in common with human music.

C) Music may have aided in reproduction, something Jimmy Hendrix found out
pretty quickly.

D) Current musical system was partly standardized by the church (pope
Gregory etc.) although more often the not, the church was against music
because it was associated with lude things or people (ex: Jimmy Hendrix'
ancestors). But they probably formalized what already existed. ex: Grammars
were invented way after speech was developped..

E) Biomusicologists argue that not only are the sounds of some animals
pleasing, but they are also composed with the same musical language that
humans use. See biomusicology for more.

Since there is no harp content in this, I suggest we take this thread
offlist.

Pierre.

Various articles, no particular order:

We Got Rhythm; the Mystery Is How and WhyWe Got Rhythm; the Mystery Is How
and Why:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/16/science/16MUSI.html?ex=1096948800&en=440c4e9100b46581&ei=5070&ex=1064289600&en=1ecd0bcccb0659e3&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE&oref=regi

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/01/0105biomusic.html

http://www.leakeyfoundation.org/newsandevents/n4_x.jsp?id=3503

http://www.unm.edu/~psych/faculty/music.htm

The memetic origin of language: modern humans as musical primates:

http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/1998/vol2/vaneechoutte_m&skoyles_jr.html#sect1.1



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Oliver Schoenborn" <oliver.schoenborn@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, October 03, 2004 10:02 AM
Subject: [Harp-L] history of music theory


> Hi, a somewhat academic question for the musicians on this list who
> might also be history buffs:
>
> Does anyone know where I could find information on the history of music
> fundamentals (for lack of a better term):
>
> 1) when were the letters A-G assigned to the scale? Or the French
> Do-re-mi? Who came up with that?
> 2) how did we end up with 12 notes in a chromatic scale, and not say 10
> (decimal base) or 16 (a power of 2 base)?
> 3) why is the major scale 7 notes and not 6 or 8?
> 4) why are those seven notes spaced as 1-1-1/2-1-1-1-1/2?
> 5) when and how was the standard C note chosen?
> 6) has anyone created music on a decimal or hexadecimal scale? What does
> it sound like?
> 7) what is the oldest written sheet of music found?
> 7) many other questions that answers to the above would create :)
>
> I suspect many of these don't have definite answers, but there's
> probably books/web sites on this stuff, written for laypeople.  I did a
> search on musicology, historical musicology, but it doesn't seem those
> are the right terms.
>
> Oliver
>
> _______________________________________________
> Harp-L is sponsored by SPAH, http://www.spah.org
> Harp-L@xxxxxxxxxx
> http://harp-l.org/mailman/listinfo/harp-l
>