History Of Progress In Music Essay, Research Paper
Music has been around sense the dawn of time. When man first
started to discover music it was not the kind of music we have today.
All it consisted of was grunts, moans, and banging things. Music has
evolved just as much as the people that created it. From Chromagnum
men to musician and from grunting too classical music, rock, and
rap. The first people imitated music from nature. They mimicked the
sound from their every day life. It had no rhythm, beat, or tune it
was just noise, but later turned into what we now call music.
Ancient people used music for much more than entertainment they
used it in every day life. They would yell and scream during battle,
blow a horn as a warning, have ceremonies to honor the dead or bring
the rain, signal danger, to show your importance in society, it was
also used as a healing power. On the front lines of battle would be
a soldier that would be holding a drum or a flute. When this was a
common act the instruments would be spread around to different
cultures after a battle. This brought on a new way of looking at
music. Around the 16th century people started to collect instead of
play music.
A persons hands and feet were the first of all the instruments
and is still the most common, because every one has them. A persons
hands and feet were readily available, and easy to use. The drum is
the second most common percussion instrument. Like most of the other
instruments the drum was found by accident when someone hit a hallow
log with a stick. The hallowed out stumps then became drums that were
decorated. Drums were used for war or for signaling over long
distances. The drum was a common instrument because it was so easy to
use; all they had to do was strike it.
The second percussion instrument was the rattle. The rattle was
found later in the time when humans started to grow plants. It was
found accidentally when someone picked up a dried out gourd of some
sort and shook it. The ancient rattles were readily available because
the people that grew the plants were just learning how to grow plant
so they made many mistakes.
The harp has been around since humans have started to use tools.
The harp was founded during the hunt. The harp was first a bow used
for killing small animals but when early humans realized that it made
music it became the harp. The harp is an instrument surrounded in
myths from many different cultures. The ancient harps were all shapes
and sizes, from small hand held harps to large harps that were bolted
to the floor. The harps would sometimes have colored strings on it to
make it easier to play because it would have many strings on it.
Some other ancient stringed instruments were the scrapers from
the 16th century, and the picker from the 16th century. The scrapers
and the pickers were all ancient forms of present-day violins,
fiddles, and guitars. Most of the ancient string instrument?s strings
were made of horsehair, hemp, or animal intestines.
One of the first woodwinds was the flute. The flute was one of
the first real instruments, because it was made on purpose. The
ancient flute was made up of reeds tied together with animal tendons,
or hemp and animal glue. The flutes were made of hallow pieces of
young wood. It was a part of many cultures and their cultural events
such as parades, ceremonies, and sporting events.
The first wind instrument was the rams horn. It was made from the
horns of rams, goats, or cattle. They were originally cups. The way it
became a horn was that the person broke the end and tried to blow out
the fragment so they could patch it up but when they did they realized
it could be an instrument. They were used to call long distance, or
amplify someone?s voice. Small horns would be carried and used for
signaling short distance and large horns were set in place to be used
for long distance calling.
The way ancient musicians would make a living was travel around
and playing their instruments. They would ask for money, food, and
shelter from the people they composed for, instead of just money. They
would tell stories, history, and sing folk songs for a living. They
had no permanent homes instead they depended on the kindness of
strangers. The people that used to be bards are now what we call
musicians, but musicians in this day and age would rather have money
than any thing else.
Queen Elizabeth had a great impact on England when she died in
1603, aside from the grief of her country. When she died the composers
in England had stopped composing and singing their music. Her death
caused a great slump in England?s music. After the death of Queen
Elizabeth when King James II came into power the music world changed
forever. His rule over England made the music world come alive with
new songs and old songs. The reason why is because the composer just
as much as everyone else hated the king so they wrote about that.
A French man by the name of Franco invented the notes and bar
graphs we have today four hundred years ago. He was a person with a
great impact on the world by making it easy to read music in the
twenty-first century.
The way music has changed is on such a large scale. The
instruments of the past have changed into the instruments of the
present and are still continuing to change. The way that the first
musicians played their hallowed out logs in a bard is much different
from the way drummers play the snare or the bongo in an orchestra. The
difference between an ancient harp and the guitar which it later
evolved into is a few thousand years. The way we look at music is
totally different from the way the first musician did. We have come so
far that now we don?t even need an instrument to make music. Music can
now be made on a computer. The types of music that we now have are so
unique that everyone has their own type of music instead of there just
being one.