The Story of Music: From Babylon to the Beatles: How Music Has Shaped Civilization

by Howard Goodall

  5 In conversation with drummer-writer Arthur Taylor (Notes and Tones, 1972).

  Image Gallery

  The famous rock paintings at Chauvet, France, are located at the points of greatest resonance in the pitch-black cave network. It is thought that Palaeolithic cave-dwellers would sing here not only as part of communal ritual, but also to find their bearings.

  This flute made from bone was found at the Stone-Age Hohle Fels cave in southern Germany and is thought to be 35,000 years old.

  The lur, a curved brass horn, was a popular instrument in Bronze-Age Denmark. One of the country’s most famous modern-day exports – Lurpak butter – features the horn both in its name and on its packaging.

  This clay tablet from Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) dates from 2600 BC and is the oldest list of musical instruments ever discovered.

  Egyptian art is rife with depictions of musicians and their instruments, suggesting that music was an important feature of public and private life.

  The kithara – a form of lyre – appears prominently on artefacts from Ancient Greece, such as this vase from the fifth century BC.

  The Ancient Greeks invented one of the most influential instruments of all time: the organ. This early model was known as a hydraulis organ because it used a tank of water to pressurise the air for the pipes.

  One of the earliest forms of musical notation involved neumes – markings above a song’s text – but they were only useful to someone already familiar with the song.

  This imaginative but impractical form of early notation, attributed to a ninth-century French monk called Hucbald, had the words rise and fall according to the shape of the tune.

  Composers of the fourteenth century were inspired by the haunting acoustics of the astounding cathedrals in which they worked. This is Reims Cathedral in France, for which Guillaume de Machaut composed masses that were unprecedented in their musical complexity.

  Composer Josquin des Prez (left) attached new importance to the meaning of the words being sung in sacred music. His Miserere of 1503 was a setting of a controversial prayer written by Girolamo Savonarola (right).

  The al’Ud (left) arrived in Europe from Persia via Muslim Spain over a thousand years ago. It inspired later European instruments such as the lute (right); the cittern (below left), a predecessor of the guitar; and the violin (below right).

  This violin was built by the famous Amati family of Cremona, Italy, whose mid-sixteenth-century violins are the world’s oldest surviving examples of the instrument.

  The world’s oldest playable organ, in the basilica of Valère in the canton of Valais in Switzerland, was built some time between 1390 and 1435.

  In an attempt to offer keyboard players the greatest range of notes per octave, Vito Trasuntino of Venice built the ‘Clavemusicum Omnitonum’ in 1606. With thirty-one notes per octave, it was ludicrously difficult to play and did not catch on.

  Louis XIV aged fifteen, as Apollo, the Sun King, in Lully’s Le Ballet de la nuit of 1653.

  The English Dancing Master, John Playford’s compendium of catchy regional folk songs and dances, was the most successful musical publication of Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth. It is still in print today.

  The twelve-note octave as we know it became a firm fixture of Western music after the publication in 1722 of J. S. Bach’s forty-eight preludes and fugues for the ‘Well-Tempered Keyboard’. The system – which shunted the abundance of naturally occurring notes into twelve equally spaced pitches – was by no means perfect, but it restricted and standardised the concept of ‘in tune’ and ‘out of tune’ across all musical instruments.

  Two earthquakes struck London in March 1750 and convinced many Londoners that the end was nigh. This contemporary lithograph lampoons the panicked gentry who fled the city – and thus turned Handel’s new oratorio, Theodora, into a box-office flop.

  The Rotunda at Ranelagh Pleasure Gardens, which had a capacity of two thousand and hosted a packed performance by the eleven-year-old Mozart in 1765.

  Haydn directing his opera L’incontro improvviso at the Esterházy Theatre in 1775.

  Niccolò Paganini was one of a new wave of superstar musicians in the first half of the nineteenth century. His extraordinary skills on the violin led many to suspect he had struck a deal with the devil.

  Clara Wieck Schumann was the wife and muse of Robert Schumann, and a talented composer and pianist in her own right.

  Robert Schumann’s Kreisleriana (1838), a homage to Johannes Kreisler, the fictional surly musician who featured in the comic novels of E. T. A. Hoffmann, was a musical love letter to Clara.

  Franz Liszt, ‘The King of the Piano’, was music’s first international star. His show-stopping performances encouraged piano builders to adopt iron frames to replace wooden ones, because pianos simply broke under the hammering Liszt gave them on stage.

  Liszt spearheaded a shift from orchestral to illustrative music, using this 1850 painting of Attila the Hun in battle as the basis for his symphonic poem Hunnenschlacht. Amid the chaotic sounds of battle, a plainsong chant, ‘Crux fidelis’, introduces the figure at top left with a gleaming cross.

  ‘Whoever wants to understand National Socialist Germany must know Wagner,’ Hitler once said, and much of the propaganda surrounding him depicted him as a Wagnerian hero.

  Third Reich stamps of 1933 featuring Wagner operas: (clockwise from top left) Tannhäuser, Rheingold, Siegfried, Parsifal, Lohengrin and Meistersinger.

  In 1873, a group of African-American students from Fisk University in Nashville brought the spiritual to Europe. In London they sang for Queen Victoria and the Prime Minister, William Gladstone, who invited them to breakfast with him. They greatly impressed the mixed-race British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, whose 1905 Negro Melodies were arrangements of the Jubilee Singers’ best-known spirituals.

  Claude Debussy was so intrigued by the Javanese dancers and musicians at the 1899 World’s Fair in Paris that he developed techniques for evoking the exotic sounds of the gamelan on a Western piano.

  Impresario Sergei Diaghilev wowed early-twentieth-century Paris with his Ballets Russes, featuring music from Stravinsky, Debussy and others and dance by such renowned figures as Vaslav Nijinsky (right) and Anna Pavlova.

  The Beatles borrowed sounds and techniques from both past musical traditions and cutting-edge advances – from ancient folk modes to electronic experiments – to become the most famous band in the world.

  Steve Reich exemplified the minimalist movement that bridged the chasm between classical music and pop in the 1970s. His hypnotic drum beats may have sounded repetitive but were in fact comprised of endlessly modifying patterns.

  Paul Simon, a master of melding unrelated musical genres, flouted an embargo on Apartheid South Africa in 1986 to record Graceland with Ladysmith Black Mambazo, mixing the exuberance of the townships with folk from the Southern United States.

  Playlist

  Extended Spotify playlists for each chapter can be found on my website: www.howardgoodall.co.uk

  1. The Age of Discovery

  Kassia of Constantinople/Byzantium: ‘Ek rizis agathis’ (ninth century)

  Early Byzantine chant with modifications, ornamentation and parallel voices

  Hildegard of Bingen: ‘Columba aspexit’ (twelfth century)

  Early ‘composed’ (original) sacred music with drone in organum style

  Pérotin the Great: ‘Viderunt omnes’ (1198)

  Experiments in chordal harmony for four voices

  John Dunstaple: ‘Quam pulchra es’ (c.1400)

  The introduction of major and minor thirds and triads

  2. The Age of Penitence

  Traditional: ‘In dulci jubilo’ (fifteenth century)

  An early example of the lauda or carol: holy words set to jaunty folk-dance tunes, mixing Latin and ‘modern’ languages

  Josquin des Prez: Miserere mei, Deus (c.1503)

  A significant early piece in Western music in which the lyrics were importa
nt and thus made audible, rather than overly melismatic

  William Cornysh: ‘Ah, Robin’ (early sixteenth century)

  Courtly song evoking the difficulties of love through nature

  Jacques Arcadelt: ‘Margot, labourez les vignes’ (c.1560) Typical of the catchy chansons that enjoyed great popularity in Europe and expedited the rise of secular music

  Giovanni Palestrina: Missa Papae Marcelli (1562)

  An example of the use of closely related chords to create a sense of stability within a piece: one of the musical outcomes of the Counter-Reformation

  William Byrd: ‘Infelix Ego’ (1591)

  A cry of lamentation in the midst of religious turmoil by a Catholic in Protestant England

  John Dowland: ‘Flow, my tears’ (c.1597)

  One of the first ‘modern’-sounding three-minute songs

  Claudio Monteverdi: ‘O Mirtillo, Mirtillo anima mia’ (1605)

  The deliberate use of clashing chords to create dissonance and suggest pain: word-painting in sound

  Claudio Monteverdi: Orfeo (1607)

  The ‘musical fable’ that successfully introduced the new musical form of opera

  Giovanni Gabrieli: ‘In ecclesiis’ (1615)

  Polychoral music for St Mark’s, Venice

  Claudio Monteverdi (or assistant): ‘Pur ti miro, pur ti godo’ from The Coronation of Poppea (1643)

  A sensual, voyeuristic duet from an opera whose radical political and emotional content marked new territory for the form

  3. The Age of Invention

  Jean-Baptiste Lully: ‘Le Bourgeois gentilhomme’ (1670)

  The rise of the overture, derived from ballet, which marked the beginnings of the symphony

  Henry Purcell: ‘Evening Hymn’ (1688)

  The use of a repeated chord sequence to give the music an inner forward momentum, with a ravishing meandering tune above

  Arcangelo Corelli: Christmas concerto (Concerto grosso Op. 6 No. 8: Allegro) (c.1690)

  An example of musical contrast or chiaroscuro: in this case a concertino of two violins and a cello alternating with a larger ensemble or ripieno

  George Frideric Handel: ‘Lascia ch’io pianga’ from Rinaldo (1711)

  An early example of the Italian operas Handel composed for the London stage

  Johann Sebastian Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1 & 2 (c.1722)

  Bach’s demonstration of Equal Temperament

  Johann Sebastian Bach: ‘Air on a G String’ (c.1722)

  Uses a perennially popular chord sequence that has been reprised in, among many others, Procul Harum’s ‘Whiter Shade of Pale’, The Moody Blues’ ‘Go Now’, Bob Marley’s ‘No Woman No Cry’ and Billy Joel’s ‘Piano Man’

  Antonio Vivaldi: The Four Seasons (1723)

  The refining of the concerto to a single violin being played against the ripieno

  George Frideric Handel: ‘Zadok the Priest’ (1727)

  English ceremonial choral style in celebration of national identity

  Johann Sebastian Bach: St Matthew Passion (1729)

  A masterful combination of dance rhythms, the Italian concerto style, a French-style proto-orchestra, the Circle of Fifths and fugal counterpoint with an architecture based on Lutheran congregational hymns

  George Frideric Handel: ‘Hallelujah’ chorus from Messiah (1741)

  A well-known example of the kind of crowd-pleasing choruses written around this time for an increasingly commercial music market

  George Frideric Handel: ‘Will the sun forget to streak’ from Solomon (1748)

  A prime example of the wisdom and compassion inherent in Handel’s music, a trait he shared with Bach

  4. The Age of Elegance and Sentiment

  Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach: ‘Flute Concerto in B flat’ (1751)

  A new, clearer, simpler style in a concerto for his employer, flautist and patron of the new wave of music, Frederick the Great of Prussia

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: ‘Serenade No. 10: Gran Partita’ (c.1781)

  An example of Mozart’s desire to ennoble humanity through his music, in a period of widespread turmoil and misery

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: ‘Dove sono’ from The Marriage of Figaro (1786)

  A masterclass in melody: an aria based around the notes of the tonic, in this case C, E, and G

  Josef Haydn: ‘Symphony No. 88, II: Largo’ (1787)

  Subtle use of quasi-symmetrical balancing melodic phrases

  Josef Haydn: ‘Symphony No. 99, IV. Finale: Vivace’ (1793)

  The playfully vivacious music Handel was composing while the Terror raged in Paris and the King and Queen of France were being executed

  Ludwig van Beethoven: ‘Funeral March’ from Eroica (1804)

  A new seriousness in Beethoven’s approach that marked a transition into music that confronted its audience; mere entertainment would no longer suffice

  Ludwig van Beethoven: ‘Symphony No. 7, II: Allegretto’ (1811)

  The dawn of a new age: super-sized musical arrangements that were larger and louder than anything previously heard

  John Field: First Book of Nocturnes (1812)

  The piano as a vehicle for music that did not obey the strict formal rules of ‘Sonata Form’, and the template for the nineteenth century’s love affair with the instrument

  Ludwig van Beethoven: ‘Symphony No. 9’ (1824)

  The clarion call for all nineteenth-century musicians: music might change the world

  Ludwig van Beethoven: ‘String Quartet No. 14, Opus 131, I: Adagio ma non troppo e molto espressivo’ (1826)

  Profoundly deaf and ill, Beethoven retreated into an inner world and wrote what sounded like music from a bleak and unsettling future

  Franz Schubert: ‘Auf dem Flusse’ from Winterreisse (1827)

  A perfect example of the use of nature in song as a metaphor for a composer’s feelings

  Felix Mendelssohn: Fingal’s Cave (The Hebrides) (1830)

  An effervescent example of music being about something extra-musical, in this instance a place

  Frederic Chopin: ‘Nocturne in E flat, Op. 9 No. 2’ (1830–2)

  The nocturne the teenage Clara Wieck played to Chopin in Paris in 1832. She was to be his, and Schumann’s and Brahms’, greatest champion on the concert platform

  Robert Schumann: ‘Im wunderschönen Monat Mai’ from Dichterliebe (1840)

  One of the many touching love songs Schumann wrote with a real, non-idealised woman in mind: his wife, Clara Wieck Schumann, herself an accomplished pianist

  5. The Age of Tragedy

  Hector Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique (1830)

  The start of the nineteenth century’s craze for music about death, destiny and supernatural love

  Franz Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 (1847)

  An early example of the rise of ‘Nationalism’, generally written by middle-class composers who had little understanding of true folk music

  Franz Liszt: Totentanz (1849)

  Liszt’s Hallowe’en-style music influenced contemporaries including Saint-Saëns and Grieg as well as, in our own time, film composers such as Danny Elfman

  Giuseppe Verdi: ‘Addio, des passato’ from La Traviata (1853)

  Verdi focuses the melodic style of popular Italian opera onto ‘realistic’ contemporary moral issues

  Richard Wagner: ‘Liebestod’ from Tristan und Isolde (1859)

  While most of Wagner’s supposed innovations came from Liszt, he composed better tunes – this one also about death, doomed love and destiny – and has retained a stronger appeal

  Pyotr Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake No. 20, Hungarian Dance: Czardas (1877)

  Another well-known example of the integration of pseudo-peasant styles into classical music, and of Russian fascination with dance – in this case the popular csárdás of Eastern Europe

  Franz Liszt: The Fountains of the Villa d’Este (1877)

  Written just three years after the First Impressionist Exhibition, this piece is akin to a sor
t of ‘impressionism’ in music, pre-dating Debussy’s ‘impressionist’ piano works by over twenty years

  Richard Wagner: Parsifal (1882)

  A masterwork, and an early use of extreme chromaticism, although its proto-Nazi philosophy and uncomfortable racial overtones have done much to make Wagner a troubling character

  Antonín Dvořák: New World symphony (1893)

  A much-loved classical favourite but one of the most controversial uses of ethnic imitation – although Dvořák denied having ‘borrowed’ Native American melodies

  Claude Debussy: ‘Gardens in the Rain’ (1903)

  It is generally Debussy rather than Liszt who is credited with musical ‘impressionism’, even though he composed this piece three decades after the Impressionist painters appeared

  6. The Age of Rebellion

  Modest Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition, I. Promenade (1874)

  Mussorgsky was unusual in his lack of formal musical training, as a result of which he was perhaps the most original composer of the late nineteenth century

  Erik Satie: First Gymnopédie (1888)

  Inspired by a desire to reduce pomposity and excess in music, this was a first indication of a backlash against Wagner

  Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade (1888)

  One of a series of Russian operas that cashed in on an obsession with the Empire’s Asiatic and Slavic folklore

  Edward Elgar: ‘Nimrod’ from Enigma Variations (1899)

  Self-consciously backward-looking in its thematic intentions, this typifies a late-nineteenth-century trend for music that yearned for the past

  Scott Joplin: ‘Maple Leaf Rag’ (1899)