The History of Classical Music - Overlooked Origins
Musical history is notoriously difficult to preserve. While literature can be translated and sculptures and monuments viewed millennia after its creation, the music of our ancestors exists only in fleeting echoes, impossible to be preserved. Without a system to record sound, we know well of the musical traditions of Ancient Greece or Rome, but the melodies are all but lost to time. The documented history of European classical music begins in the 14th century, when European priests developed musical notation, finally providing a way to transcribe sound. This breakthrough is where we begin our discussion of early music. Medieval Beginnings Medieval music (500 - 1400) was shaped by composers like Hildegard von Bingen and Pérotin , who expanded plainchant—melodies sung by a single voice without instrumental accompaniment—into early polyphony, where multiple independent melodic lines were sung simultaneously. A well-known example is Pérotin’s Viderunt Omnes, which demonstrates how sim...