4 ms·

Note that "standard melody #3473" was literally exactly how European medieval church music was (and still is) categorized. There are 7 notes in the scale and ce

Note that "standard melody #3473" was literally exactly how European medieval church music was (and still is) categorized. There are 7 notes in the scale and certain rules that eliminate some possible sequences, but the space of possible canti firmi was finite and studied as a closed space by medieval music theorists.

Sander_Marechal 4y ago
Got any more information on that? It sounds enormously interesting!
- bandrami 4y ago
  Oy... medieval music theory is such a huge subject that I couldn't begin to do it justice in a HN comment. The short version is that some time in the 9th century monks developed neumes, an early form of musical notation, to write down the chants they chanted at different times of the day. Medieval music theorists classified those chants according to the last note (what we now call the "tonic") and the most common note (what we now call the "dominant"). There were 262144 theoretically possible melodies (8 notes long, 6 possible notes, but some were rejected for music-theoretic reasons so the actual space was rather smaller) which could be indexed by their sequence in a collated list of melodies ("on the Sunday after Pentacost sing the 7th chant in the Lydian mode" or whatever). If I had to pick a "best-of" reading list, I'd say the 9th-century "Musica Enchiriadis", Berno's "Prologus in Tonarum", and Boethius's "De Institutione Musica". These all assume a familiarity with Platonic music theory, so at least skim through Plato's "Timaeus" first. There will also be more references to astronomy than will make sense to somebody in the modern age, because music and astronomy were believed to be essentially the same thing. Also more recent research has found that actual musicians of the time seem to have completely ignored the theorists. Some things never change.
- HeckFeck 4y ago
  Not quite the same, but related. In the 18th Century Presbyterian Church, they only sang Biblical psalms set to simple (but distinct) tunes and without any musical accompaniment. This was known as exclusive psalmody. The psalms weren't the prose-style you'll find in any print Bible though, they were their own translation called the Metrical Psalms. Its 1650 edition proved very long lasting. Many of these psalms were set to common metre, meaning that if you found such a psalter and tried singing it to some well-known tune it will very likely 'fit' the lyrics. You could try Psalm 23 set to the tune of The British Grenadiers, or Amazing Grace, or even The Star-Spangled Banner: https://thewestminsterstandard.org/psalm-23/ https://thewestminsterstandard.org/psalm-23/ This was actually how the psalms were practised by congregations in my home country. The psalm lyrics were considered too sacred for practice, so they set the same tunes to other (sometimes comical) lyrics and practised those during the week. Then on Sunday the minister would say something like 'we will now sing Psalm xx to the tune of lilies', and the congregation would know the tune even if they hadn't memorised the psalm lyrics.
  - quercusa 4y ago
    Still happening in the Free Church of Scotland. They have psalters with pages split horizontally, so you have the words at the top and the tune at the bottom.
toyg 4y ago
Trust the medieval Church for sucking the fun out of everything.
- bandrami 4y ago
  There were monks whose job was to chant various psalms at specific tempos through the night so they would know when it was 4am to wake up the cook so he could start breakfast. I don't know if I could ever hate music, but that would get me close.
  - krisoft 4y ago
    Oh my. After about a single night of that I would invent a water clock.
    - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
      Considering water clocks date back to 1500 BCE it wouldn't be hard.
      - red-iron-pine 4y ago
        So what did the monks in the pre-1500s do?
        ben_w 4y ago
        BC, there were no Christian monks for at least another 15 centuries after the κλεψύδρα was invented.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
        Unbelievably, there were very few medieval monks before the birth of Christ.
    - 4y ago

Sander_Marechal 4y ago

Got any more information on that? It sounds enormously interesting!

bandrami 4y ago
Oy... medieval music theory is such a huge subject that I couldn't begin to do it justice in a HN comment. The short version is that some time in the 9th century monks developed neumes, an early form of musical notation, to write down the chants they chanted at different times of the day. Medieval music theorists classified those chants according to the last note (what we now call the "tonic") and the most common note (what we now call the "dominant"). There were 262144 theoretically possible melodies (8 notes long, 6 possible notes, but some were rejected for music-theoretic reasons so the actual space was rather smaller) which could be indexed by their sequence in a collated list of melodies ("on the Sunday after Pentacost sing the 7th chant in the Lydian mode" or whatever). If I had to pick a "best-of" reading list, I'd say the 9th-century "Musica Enchiriadis", Berno's "Prologus in Tonarum", and Boethius's "De Institutione Musica". These all assume a familiarity with Platonic music theory, so at least skim through Plato's "Timaeus" first. There will also be more references to astronomy than will make sense to somebody in the modern age, because music and astronomy were believed to be essentially the same thing. Also more recent research has found that actual musicians of the time seem to have completely ignored the theorists. Some things never change.
HeckFeck 4y ago
Not quite the same, but related. In the 18th Century Presbyterian Church, they only sang Biblical psalms set to simple (but distinct) tunes and without any musical accompaniment. This was known as exclusive psalmody. The psalms weren't the prose-style you'll find in any print Bible though, they were their own translation called the Metrical Psalms. Its 1650 edition proved very long lasting. Many of these psalms were set to common metre, meaning that if you found such a psalter and tried singing it to some well-known tune it will very likely 'fit' the lyrics. You could try Psalm 23 set to the tune of The British Grenadiers, or Amazing Grace, or even The Star-Spangled Banner: https://thewestminsterstandard.org/psalm-23/ https://thewestminsterstandard.org/psalm-23/ This was actually how the psalms were practised by congregations in my home country. The psalm lyrics were considered too sacred for practice, so they set the same tunes to other (sometimes comical) lyrics and practised those during the week. Then on Sunday the minister would say something like 'we will now sing Psalm xx to the tune of lilies', and the congregation would know the tune even if they hadn't memorised the psalm lyrics.
- quercusa 4y ago
  Still happening in the Free Church of Scotland. They have psalters with pages split horizontally, so you have the words at the top and the tune at the bottom.

toyg 4y ago

Trust the medieval Church for sucking the fun out of everything.

bandrami 4y ago
There were monks whose job was to chant various psalms at specific tempos through the night so they would know when it was 4am to wake up the cook so he could start breakfast. I don't know if I could ever hate music, but that would get me close.
- krisoft 4y ago
  Oh my. After about a single night of that I would invent a water clock.
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    Considering water clocks date back to 1500 BCE it wouldn't be hard.
    - red-iron-pine 4y ago
      So what did the monks in the pre-1500s do?
      - ben_w 4y ago
        BC, there were no Christian monks for at least another 15 centuries after the κλεψύδρα was invented.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
        Unbelievably, there were very few medieval monks before the birth of Christ.
  - 4y ago