The Medieval European Singing Style and its Correspondence with Middle-Eastern Singing
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- Опубликовано: 26 окт 2022
- In this video, I analyse how the overall singing style of European Medieval music was markedly different from current Classical conservatory techniques, and resembled current Greek, Arabic, Bulgarian or Turkish forms of singing far more-styles of singing defined by less precise pitch and florid melismatic delivery.
Sources:
"The Sound of Medieval Song, Ornamentation and Vocal Style According to the Treatises"
Timothy J. McGee, Latin translations by Randall A. Rosenfeld
"Ornamental" Neumes and Early Notation" Timothy J McGee
scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi... 
Видеоклипы
In this video, I analyse how the overall singing style of European Medieval music was markedly different from current Classical conservatory techniques, and resembled current Greek, Arabic, Bulgarian or Turkish forms of singing far more-styles of singing defined by more flexible pitch and florid melismatic delivery.
Examples of the vocal styles described here:
ruclips.net/video/OyZvpFsn1rg/видео.html&feature=shares
ruclips.net/video/2EY2ayoH81Y/видео.html&feature=shares
ruclips.net/video/1gEV42RKf6E/видео.html&feature=shares
ruclips.net/video/2YSCgKsvUeA/видео.html&feature=shares
ruclips.net/video/6b7keBpCyBU/видео.html&feature=shares
ruclips.net/video/pB-iSVszMLk/видео.html&feature=shares
ruclips.net/video/uWl4VnrZITg/видео.html
Sources:
"The Sound of Medieval Song, Ornamentation and Vocal Style According to the Treatises"
Timothy J. McGee, Latin translations by Randall A. Rosenfeld
"Ornamental" Neumes and Early Notation" Timothy J McGee
scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1168&context=ppr
“Microtones and neumes”, Leo Lousberg:
www.medieval.eu/microtones-and-neumes/amp/
“Microtones as rhetorical tools”, Leo Lousberg
www.academia.edu/27388625/160729_Microtones_as_rhetorical_tools_pdf
“Microtones according to Augustine” Leo Lousberg
www.academia.edu/44336775/MICROTONES_ACCORDING_TO_AUGUSTINE_NEUMES_SEMIOTICS_AND_RHETORIC_IN_ROMANO_FRANKISH_LITURGICAL_CHANT_Volume_II
Hyeronimus de Moravia: Ornamentation and Exegesis in Gregorian, Old Roman, and Byzantine Chant: academia.edu/resource/work/853498
"On Microtones in Gregorian Chant," Ted Krasnicki: academia.edu/resource/work/109141625
When you said about Anglican church music, it is probably their traditions stemming back to the Reformation in the 16th century where some of their traditions actually changed when they broke off from the Catholic Church.
@@greygamertales1293 Evensong is part of our Cathedrals traditions
you know, a thing that comes up a lot is that when many english speakers think "western" they mean medieval france and everything that's close to that, so german, english, maybe italian, etc. They forget that was mostly forests and barbarians for the longest time, and the "west" went from rome to greece, two places that are much more to the east than that, not to even mention the eastern roman empire, that most europeans pretend to never have existed at all.
If you became just a little bit acquainted with the eastern roman empire then suddenly these "eastern" influences become not so weird at all.
I would love a playlist of recordings that are closer to the style described here. Also, great video and cute dog.
@@MorganLaVigne
Thanks for the suggestion! I’ve added a short list-obviously as said in the video examples are few and far between as few recordings apply this aspect of the vocal style, but for more, I especially recommend the Ensemble Organum :)
"We sing in cursive" ...probably the best way to describe this.
My late mother was a singer of traditional Greek music. I think she would have liked watching your videos.
Very interesting. Here in Serbia people tend to say, "ah those evil Ottomans! They ruined our music, and now our music sounds oriental." But it seems our contemporary folk music is just a continuation of our old traditions.
Well said! It’s indeed a common reaction in Balkan countries to attribute the “oriental” sounding aspects to Ottoman influence, but generally these oriental elements are attested in the Balkans as far back as the Hellenistic Era, which makes it impossible to attribute them to Turkish influence. Turkish music undoubtedly influenced Balkanic music (and vice versa), but identifying which influence was from which side is a lot more complicated than going off of what we have associated with “orientality” today, since these are only our modern associations. For the most part, Serbian, Bulgarian and neighbouring traditions are far more continuous with pre-Ottoman occupation than we give them credit for
@Farya Faraji Thanks for your response!
Somewhere I read there were only 200,000 Ottomans in the 14th century, and at the same time there were millions of Greeks and Armenians in Asia Minor. And a few more million Slavs and Greeks in the Balkans.
Once Ottomans conquered all these territories a big chunk of local peoples Turkicized quickly, and for sure they continued with their music, architecture, traditions... They probably changed religion only.
DNK researches show that modern Turks have a small percentage of Asiatic origin. They're mostly descendants of Anatolian, Balkanic peoples, Arabs (The same thing happened to Hungarians, genetically they're most Slavs + some Germanic DNA).
So it's probably safe to say that Ottoman culture is actually Byzantine culture that is Islamized and with some Asiatic influences.
@@faintvids7352 Definitely, Turkish culture is a wonderful mixture of all these elements, and the role of native Anatolian cultures is foundational to it. Like any culture, they’re heavily influenced by where they reside-Anatolia in this case; or how culturally dissimilar the Irish and Afghans are due to their geography and neighbours despite both having Indo-European roots.
That’s the most important point in understanding that Balkanic music isn’t just a case of originally Western-sounding music that was “orientalised.” This “oriental” sound was always there in that region, and at some point in the past it even stretched to areas like France
Well, I heard that the original music of the Turks were in Pentatonic like the other East Asian music.
@@faryafaraji what about neomelodic neopolitan music?
When you talked about how medieval singers did not really conform to written music as it is in the manuscripts, I wonder if this thinking also applies to recipes in historical cookbooks because I heard from Ann Reardon about how the historical recipes are ambiguous with the rations.
You actually blew my mind there-now I’m rethinking all those historical recipes I’ve cooked in the past hahaha. You raise an interesting question, which is whether past cultures generally took a less literal approach to written down instructions, which would have acted more like guidelines. It’s interesting to think about
Medieval recipes have a LOT of "take as much of (ingredient) as seems good to you." Turning them into edible food today is a redaction process more than following a modern recipe!
It is also how my Russian host mother in college taught me to make blini, which I have never really been able to reproduce from her estimate-by-experience approach.
My man looking like Sargon of Akkad
The _actual_ Sargon of Akkad of History,
Not the embarrassing RUclipsr with the British accent.
I WAS LITERALLY GONNA COMMENT THAT
@@fuferito Found the commie
Yes, the king of the first empire
Sargon of Akkad was reincarnated into a middle aged British man who asserts his sigma male by raping greenies
You decide if it’s good or not
In one single video, you managed to put words on why I feel so fascinated by Middle-Eastern and Balkan traditional singing, AND open me the doors of a whole new perspective. As a French, lover of traditional music around the world, I have never taken any real interest into medieval music of my own country, because despite of oh "boringly" flat it felt to me, compared to more eastern techniques, due to this wrong perception. But now, with this whole new perspective, I might just start getting an interest into french and occitan medieval songs, and try to re-interpret them with this newfound knowledge.
I just feel so excited learning about all this! I'd like to share my hype to my friends, but none would understand what the hell is so great about learning that w.european medieval singing "used some ornements", so instead I'm venting out here.
I discovered your channel today, and after 3 videos that really picked my interest on a deeper level, I can safely say that you've gain a loyal subscriber :)
I'm exactly the same!!
It’s such a gift to be taught and then to discover that there is so much more richness for the ear than one would have expected.
Extremely interesting video. Thanks. I am fascinated how “oriental” the European Middle Ages would sound like to our modern perceptions. That can also be said in other aspects such as food. There is a very interesting book about food in the Middle Ages called “Manger au Moyen Age” by Bruno Laurioux in which he describes how Medieval (aristocratic) food was. It was unbelievably similar to Indian/Levantine food. It was only in Modern times (18th century) that modern cuisine was invented that rejects spicy tastes and adopts more sober ones. These estrangement of the Middle Ages makes it even more interesting to me as a Medieval Scholar myself. Thanks again for the video.
Ps: your dog is adorably distracting.
I wonder if the traditional food of Eastern Europe still also contains some aspects of medieval European cuisine because I think Western European culture changed a lot through history compared to Eastern Europe.
Being a Jazz Musician and Medieval Reconstructionist through the SCA I always noticed that the music was written very well for improvisation. Even though I didn't have the academic background at the time something just seemed wrong about the way it sounded out of the box.
I agree; it reads like The Real Book and I think is best performed in a way more akin to jazz, with improv and flexibility etc to bring the tunes to life
Excellent video! I love singing, and this really helped me understand its details better. Being Serbian, that ''ornamented'' melismatic singing feels natural to me, and sometimes I have to watch it not to skew the tones in songs where it shouldn't be done. If you haven't heard them already, I recommend listening to ''Rasti, rasti moj zeleni bore'' and ''Zaspo Janko''. Those are two of my favorite traditional songs.
I’ll check them out, thanks for the recommendation! And same here, I have a natural inclination to ornament songs that don’t have them, we’re so conditioned to do it in these cultures with this type of singing
It reminds me my own Assyrian mother saying, while I was listening to Ensemble Organum's Templar chants:
"Oh ! It sounds like our Greek/Syriac Orthodox songs !" Enough said.
Dude, I am Portuguese, from an early age got used hearing gregorian chants and music I am used to hear as medieval and their music along with the history of the templars who founded my country motivated me to become a history student in the university, when you put music you say people claim being from middle eastern origin, for me it was the music of my country and the music of my religion, it sounds native and calming to me, making me feel as if I was a child on my mom's lap. I don't get why people call that middle eastern, maybe they are all anglo-saxon/americans or protestants and are not used with the gregorian chants?
Yeah it’s definitely a big influence pf the North American/North European perspective. People call this type of singing Middle-Eastern but it’s just as much found in Southern Europe, Portuguese fado is an example
@@faryafarajiDamn anglos
Would love to see this style of recreation catching on. And I'm for sure waiting for your upcoming medieval covers.
My first introduction to the world of medieval music were the songs "palästinalied" and "kalenda maya", and now I'm very curious to know how they would sound like in this more accurate approach.
I recommend checking out my Medieval Music playlist, I have a few, and by lucky coincidence, the first one I did incorporating this knowledge was Palästinalied haha! ruclips.net/video/pB-iSVszMLk/видео.html&feature=shares
Are you familiar with Azam Ali? She sings medieval european songs too accompanied by middle eastern instruments and makes great world music as well, I think you'd love it.
The album 'Portals of Grace' especially
Your channel is so special, and this video is yet another reason why I'm subbed.
Ah, I was wondering where your earlier video about Douce Dame Jolie went. it's great to hear you cover this song again- besides being a catchy tune its still one of the most eye opening lessons on medieval music that I'd ever heard. RE: what you've often reiterated about assumptions, I'd grown up assuming Greek Orthodox music sounded just like Ukrainian Orthodox- that since the Greeks brought missionaries they'd probably brought their church singing too. Your compositions were the first time I'd ever heard Byzantine chant, and your comment about E. Slavic music having very western modalities sent me down a pretty cool rabbit hole into Van Der Oye's "Russian Orientalism". It pretty surprising to realize it wasn't just trends influencing the way our music sounds... but in part a conscientious effort to scrub the "Eastern" out of "Eastern Europe".
Insightful exposition, again. Cheers. An interesting parallel is this. It is similar to some extent to how many literalists approach the reading and understanding of Christian scriptures, and even many other ancient texts. This is especially true with Protestants (not bashing, love my Prot bros,) who, having inherited the scholastic tradition, read the texts literally and rarely understood passages in the context of the languages they were originally written, many times missing metaphors, language play and various linguistic techniques of the day. On another note, the comparison between the Russian and Greek rendition of Agni Parthene was correct, however, Kabarnos, the Greek guy who chanted is considered to have taken a step too far, even by Greek standards, and especially by Byzantine standards. A good example of how the Greek Byzantine would have sounded is the rendition of the same chant by the Monks of Simonopetra or Petros Gaitanos.
An equally insightful comment, I agree there’s an interesting “literalistic” parralel in the interpretation of both text and music.
As for Kabarnos, you’re also very correct, and I heard many Greeks mention that same sentiment when I was talking to them when visiting the country; that said it gets even more complicated.
As controversial as it might be to say in some very proud circles of Byzantine cantors, Byzantine Greek chant was still *strongly* influenced by Western influences starting from the liberation of Greece from the Ottoman Empire. The Ison became more mobile and starting doing counterpoint, something very Western, and the pitch “liquidity” was also reduced over time.
So whilst it’s definitely accurate that Kabarnos’ techniques are pushing it far by Byzantine standarts, we’re talking about post-1800’s Byzantine standarts, and earlier chants of the actual Eastern Roman empire show neumatic indications of the same techniques Kabarnos uses-there’s two great papers by Oliver Gerlach and Alexander Lingas on Academia.edu that talk about this, “Ottoman Corruptions of post-Byzantine chant” (the title is obviously ironic) and “Medieval Byzantine Chant and the Sound of Orthodoxy), which analyse earlier Byzantine chant as opposed to today’s. So to Kabarnos’ credit, while he is pushing it far by today’s standarts, I believe he is deliberately reintroducing an older “pitch liquidity” that was present in the Middle-Ages. Your comment actually makes me realise that this melismatic aspect of singing was reduced in all of Europe including Greece, only that Western Europe lost it completely whilst Greece had it reduced to a more limited extent. This also parallels how Greek music used microtonal notes all the time before the 1800’s, but current Greek music has generally eroded them to use only tones and semitones for the most part.
@@faryafaraji Very interesting. The ironic thing is that Lingas's ensemble Cappella Romana - downloaded Lost Voices of Hagia Sophia and Hymns of Kassianí (stunning, of course) - is more adapted acoustically to what he would call the post-1800 'western' influence. I am not spiting him for that, of course. It was most probably for marketing purposes as his audience is after all mainly western. Great work, again. Thank you very much.
@@orthochristos Same, I also noticed that Cappella Romana’s vocal delivery is ultimately very restrained in terms of “melismatic liquidity.” Then again I never read anywhere that Lingas claimed to be performing historically accurate or reconstructed performances, it might well be a case of them doing ancient chants without necessarily looking to do an ancient performance at the same time, which is perfectly valid. Marcel Péres’ Ensemble Organum tends to the one most interested in using this older aesthetic in a historical fashion, although some of their arrangement techniques can still be highly speculative
Have any of you heard about the medieval Byzantine music of St. John Koukouzelis?
Based pfp and name ☦️
You are making great points about medieval music. I also immediately thought about the Ensemble Organum and their interpretation of Guillaume de Machaut. Also, pitch is an issue for modern European listeners. We think, it is silly and kind of superstitious (playing into the common myth of medieval people being uncultivated and/or not very bright) to assign somehow bad names to intervals or to "ban" certain intervals in composition because they are "unclean", because we have and are used to equally temperate scale. If we work i.e. with pythagorean pitch, some intervals become really dissonant and uncomfortable to listen to, so it does make a lot of sense to avoid them if we want to avoid that (or use it specifically for that reason to that effect, which would then get lost in "translation" to a more modern pitch).
At the moment, historically informed Baroque music is rising emancipating itself from purist classical interpretations. Maybe, eventually we will be able to get further back in time and adjust ourselves to historically informed interpretations and recreations of medieval European music.
That’s a great point about Baroque music. The effect of having characterised the Classical repertoire as the end-all, ultimate form of music in human history (instead of what it is, which is an incredibly sophisticated repertoire among many others) is often talked about in the context of colonialism and European imperialism and how it negatively affects other world traditions, but something we should talk about more is how it does a disservice to Western music itself from before the Classical era (and even current Western music judging by how some Classical purists perceive traditions like Jazz).
There are some who believe that the work is already completely done vis a vis historical accuracy in Medieval music, but as you said, even Baroque is only just starting to grow out of the shadow of Classical purism, so the idea that current representation of the Medieval repertoire has nothing to improve doesn’t hold up.
@@faryafaraji
In Theatre, there was a similar development by the way. Shakespeare used stage directions scarcely leaving much room for the artists' interpretation who would then do their thing according to their tradition (Ben Crystal is a great expert in Shakespearean theatrical tradition). Later, stage directions were very detailed to the point when they became poetry (and somewhat detached from playable reality, thus kinda post dramatic...) within themselves like Sean O'Casey. Similarly, in earlier music you have notes as a rough framework and during late romanticism you get a plethora of detailed indications how the piece needs to be played exactly like Mahler.
I need to learn how to do this now! Last year I was at a reenactment event and medieval combat tournament(HEMA/WMA). We had an early music expert and a professional folk singer with us in the camp. They sang "Douce Dame Jolie" and I got just sloshed enough on spiced wine to join in. It was glorious! Turns out I had an okay voice and I knew the songs well enough to sing them with some confidence when I had the lyrics in front of me (even if it was damned hard reading them in Bernard's impeccable 14th century hand). But the vocals were missing a little something. Our early music expert, Bernard, showed me your video about organum too and I'm totally down for incorporating some ideas from that into our performance. This one adds even more ideas to draw from. Who knows? Maybe one day we'll be an actual band!😄
Azam Ali's "Portals of Grace" album has multiple good examples of medieval European songs sung melismatically, I highly recommend it if anyone's looking for examples.
i'm so glad I found this video. this is super fascinating and one of my favorite topics. thank you!
Thank you for making this video! It was most illuminating. I wondered how the medieval vocals evolved. I enjoy the examples of ancient and medieval singing that you have posted. Keep up the good work!
Thanks alot! When it comes to the evolution of Medieval European vocals, the generally accepted explanation, which is one I also support, is that harmony (different people singing different notes/melodies at the same time) became more and more central to Western European practices, which required simplifying the vocal melodic line so that every pitch sung would be clear and make the harmony as clear as possible
Haha. I loved that comment about the Ensemble Organum clip of Kyrie Eleison from Guillaume de Machaut's Messe de Notre Dame. My medieval history professor (who was also a musicologist) played us that very recording and talked about how Machaut was specifically going for an old-school (to him) vocal aesthetic that to our modern ears sounds very Middle Eastern. So, ironically, while modern audiences might regard this kind of organum as deviant, Machaut actually was aiming to emulate older Christian musical tradition.
The vocal ornamentation in Irish sean nós singing comes to mind.
I've recently stumbled across your channel, and it's super cool!! I'm a history nerd with no affinity to music, but you explain the technical term perfectly, it's very clear and I adore your teaching style.
Thank you so much for putting great knowledge on the internet !
Hi Farya!
I came across your video searching for one of the books you mention as sources: "The Sound of Medieval song, Ornamentation and Vocal Style Acording to the Treatises".
What a thought-provoking video. I'm very glad to find this topic covered with such a broad perspective and care. Thanks a lot for this great presentation!
The one more deepens into the practice, listening and understanding of what we usually summarize as "modal music" the one more realizes that we are all not that different 😊
I'd like to point out as well that - despite "Flamenco" style of singing/music being one of the most known styles coming from (south) Spain - you can find melismatic chants,
non-diatonic scales/strange intervals, gliding pitches and in general this colorful approach to "notes as regions, not points" singing - or cursive singing as you say - all across Spain and the whole of Europe in the traditional music of many different regions, each with its own flavour.
I find it fascinating that we are currently reaching this level of reexamining asumptions both about early music and traditional music, if anything, this expands the "play territory" instead of constricting us into corsetted perspectives.
Similarly, this singing style can also be found in Ethiopia, Senegal, Xinjiang, even Malaysia, all for historically different reasons.
In fact, there is one African American style singing that does use quarter tone melismas; the Field Holler. Its actually believed to come from slaves that came from Muslim backgrounds
Müzik ile kurduğun bu tarihi bağ herkes için ilgi çekici.salute from Turkey dostum.
Farya I have discovered this channel not long time ago. I miss example songs from the Central and West Slavic world.
Love your videos man.
In the part where you say, “for the music of the Middle Ages the gap between the written form and the performed version is substantial”, and show how the classically biased interpretation is not an accurate portrayal of what the music sounded like.
A really good example of this in modern times would be chord sheets, either for jazz standards or for “acoustic guitar and voice” singer songwriter stuff.
If 500 years from now someone finds a chord changes sheet for a jazz standard and think that you just play a D7 chord once and play this simple melody over it, with no possibility of improvisation, or a chord sheet for a singer-songwriter, they might reasonably assume that you would strum G one time and recite an unpitched line of spoken word poetry, and then strum a C chord one time followed by more spoken poetry. They might even come up with an entire story about how “up until now people have only ever strummed a chord once and recited poetry over it, but NOW we figured out that we can sing pitched melodic lines!”
All that to say, when we take the same lens that the 1600s people used on medieval music and apply it to our own era, we see a possibility for just as many silly assumptions.
Keep up the great work!
You are amazingggggg loving the content!!!
I'm so glad I discovered this channel. I've been interested in early music for a long time but I don't know a lot and I'm not a musician, so your explanations are very very useful to me.
I'm basically teaching myself about music and your channel has become my New Favorite Thing on YT. And Cookie is so adorable! She made it harder to concentrate but I don't care! 😆
Love your content ❤️
well done. Examples are very illustrative. Enjoyed performances. Thank you for doing this.
Thank you very much!
Hi Farya, recently discovered your channel, and really enjoying it so far. I have been pondering the issues you raise in this video for years, as someone who has been singing and directing Gregorian Chant liturgically for 12 years or so, but also have a general fascination with early music practices.
The difficulty I have with some of the points you make is the fact that - as you rightly point out - there are so many different traditions in ways to articulate the "ornaments" (apologies for using the term) according to time and place, that it would be almost impossible to render an "authentic" performance of how it really would have been done if you are cut off from a living tradition - any attempt at reconstruction must surely fall short.
I agree that the medieval western style would probably have included these elaborate vocal techniques, but it is not enough to say "these techniques sound as if they are similar to eastern styles, so let's apply an eastern style to it." In reality, these Western traditions are probably simply lost to us, at least in their complete forms.
However, one thing I wish you had touched on more was how we can still find remnants of a living tradition of this musical style in the West - and how this might be more instructive to us for reconstructing a western medieval style of ornamentation. You say that it is foreign idea to us to think of "blonde, blue-eyed people in snowy Albion singing like Arabs", but perhaps it is not such a foreign idea for us to think of them singing like the Irish: See the traditional Sean Nos style of the Irish ruclips.net/video/BJwY8MmjC_A/видео.html (and this more modern performance that I find haunting: ruclips.net/video/d8ak_m4v7VM/видео.html)
Less foreign still to the hills of Albion is the highly idiosyncratic method of ornamentation in Scottish bagpipe music - and of course the bagpipe music was common across Western Europe; it merely happened to stick around in Scotland more than anywhere else - this living tradition perhaps giving us a clue of what it would have been like elsewhere.
There is so much more I would like to chat about - including pre-equal temperament tuning systems, and what "microtonal" really means (I'm of the opinion that it is really an anachronistic way to refer to unequally tempered music), however I'll just leave you with one more example. This is piece that is on the threshold between medieval and renaissance - one of Western Europe's favourite songs of the 14th Century. The performance practice of the time was certainly to improvise "diminutions" that is dividing the long notes of the melody up into quick notes - this practice persisted as a tradition well into the Baroque. I wonder if its roots are in how ornamentation was really made in the early medieval period: ruclips.net/video/QYruB57dJ60/видео.html
P.S. I think a really fruitful crossover/collaboration video could be made between yourself and the @earlymusicsources channel.
I would love to hear medieval music performed this way. Just found your channel today and it's my new favorite thing. Keep up the great work!
Pretty interesting - thank you very much for sharing this!
Love all your videos Farya, keep going on!
Thank you so much! I have been teaching this for the past 50 years!
What an absolutely mind blowing video, just incredible, this is so wild to me because it explains perfectly why I always found the Ensemble Organum's performances much more favourable than that of anglican chants - so much so that when I myself did my own renditions of songs like the Dies Irae I would add ornamentation without even knowing what it was. This is such an amazing video thank you so much Farya, you're awesome :D!!
thank you so much for making information like this accessible to people who don’t have the means to be formally educated in music. I’ve looked for this information for years, and im so glad you are making this available without the academic jargon. If you talked to me about “art music”, my mind goes to Dirty Projectors or Brian Eno, not a symphony. This is so helpful for bridging the gap between a self taught rock musician like myself and people i meet with classical training and music degrees who had the privilege of training and information I couldn’t access growing up. Thanks!!
Great as always
Haven’t watched the video yet but I must say, what a fine dog you have there.
Great content!
Perhaps the conflict between eastern and western peoples was also one of the causes of changes in musical taste and the development of the tradition of harmony. In the Late Renaissance/Early Baroque, there were editions of Gregorian Chant that were made by cutting melismas and relocating them according to the musical tastes of the time and perceptions about keeping away from chant "corruptions" that seemed "barbarisms".
Another fantastic video (and I love Cookie!). This really makes medieval European music sound so much more texturally rich and interesting. I hope more modern singers will try this approach.
Not very familiar with Middle-Eastern musical tradition so I'm going to try to understand this in my own terms lol. Would you say some common medieval melodies may have functioned similarly to jazz standards?
You don’t need to know anything about Middle-Eastern music to understand this don’t worry :) When it comes to jazz, the only similarity I can think of is the high degree of improvisation in Medieval music. Ancient Greek and Roman music were closer to modern American Jazz actually, as some of their modes were the exact same as those in Blues and Jazz today, although the absence of chord progressions and harmony in both traditions make them quite distinct from Jazz and Blues ultimately.
@@faryafaraji No harmony or chord progressions in Classical Mediterranean music. Very, very interesting. A friend and I were talking recently about how portrayals of Roman and Hellenistic culture in media go to great lengths to make it sort of glamorous and familiar but to someone interested in cultural history it just comes off as sterilized. He showed me a video just called "afghan folk song" with just a man and some plucked instrument and said it's probably more what Hellenistic music sounded like than any of over-produced operatic stuff you hear in movies. I thought maybe he was biased cause he's from the region, but on reconsidering it matches that description almost perfectly.
@@sean668 Your friend is absolutely right-harmony and chord progressions emerge as we know them only in Western Europe in the Renaissance. If you’re interested you can watch my video “The European Roots of Middle-Eastern Music,” in which I explain how most of Middle-Eastern music is a continuation of Hellenistic Greek music; the Arab writers of the early Islamic Golden Age themselves describe how they adopted the salient features of Ancient Greek music theory to build their own.
The music of the Classical Mediterranean was a modal, melodic tradition defined by the usage of many varied modes such as the Chromatic and Enharmonic ones, that have survived in the regions east of Greece today. Western music is very distantly related to Ancient Greek music but Middle-Eastern (and obviously modern Greek) traditions are its direct continuation
@@faryafaraji Take a listen to Rembetika music and you will see the 'jazziness' through and through...
@@orthochristos Absolutely, that’s often found in modal chromaticism, it’s basically playing notes that aren’t in the diatonic mode; Greeks do that ALOT and it’s one of the most striking features that is directly continuous with Greek music from 2000 years ago, that level of continuity is very striking
Thank you so much for the last chapter in particular! Our (collective cultural) understanding of historical cultural contact and exchange is so strongly seen through later national romantic lens even today that it makes explaining pre-romantic cultural history extremely difficult. This was a lovely video and provided a lot of food for thought even for a hobbyist choir singer!
I've been watching your videos for a while. This one right here is goooolddd! I listen to medieval European music a lot and have wondered about this topic for a long time. Thank you so much for sharing. Towards the end I realized I wasn't yet subscribed. OMG, sin! Needless to say, I'm subdcribed now. Please do a video on Sean nós singing. Irish traditional singing. If you don't already know it (which I highly doubt) please delve into that world and Celtic music in general! 😍❤️💞💕
super interesting topic once again, thanks for your work!
I feel like I have to dive into these 'oriental sounding' ways to play music more; musically, I've been feeling stuck for a while now, out of ideas, out of inspiration, everything seems to have been done already; maybe, a journey into this foreign territory might light the spark again and your channel is a treat when it comes to that!
I learn a lot as just been a world music listener. Thank you.
The way you explain this in terms of cursiveness is super helpful. Thank you so much (im here because im navigating the russian / byzantine chant Orthodox world)
This is awesome! Was rapt at attention for the whole thing and I perked up my sillly little ears when I heard Douce Dame Jolie :P.
We have a similar approach in Jazz. We open the "real book" and what we do out of it is unique... The leadsheet in the real book is just a guideline. Great video😊As to the unified "province" of Eurasia... Long were the trade routes in ancient times, as far back as to the bronze age, where tin even came from Cornwall to the Middle East, connecting every country, from England to India
Farya, you are amazing! Hello in Ukraine!
Hello from Canada my friend, thank you :)
I like the performance examples.
thank you for the video
man i dont know if you read the comments from this video, but i just wanna thank you very much for all the didatic content that you make :)
It helps me so much on learning musical history, a hug from latin América, Brasil!
Thank you brother
You are a musical genius!
Thank you for clarifying the differences between western and eastern tones.
Interesting . Embellishments of all kinds were and are very common in. operatic singing of the Baroque and classical periods , such as Da Capo arias .
Very true!. I believe McGee mentions in his book the possibility that the higher occurence of vocal embellishments in Baroque and Renaissance music were essentially remnants of a more widespread Medieval practice. He puts the decline of the ultra-melismatic style at around the 1400’s
haha i had watched this today before you sent you reply.. good job mate.
bless you from lebanon and be safe.
I love your melismatic rendition. It genuinely made me tear up with beauty.
Fascinating, I had heard some of Ensemble Organum's work and found it compelling, but had never understood the historical justification (other than that surely mediaeval singing was different to modern classical singing). I will try to track down the book you referenced. One small point, improvisation was still common in Europe well after the baroque period. The fascinating book by Gjerdingen "Child Composers in the Old Conservatories" illustrates in a lot of detail the musical education that grew out of Naples in the 17th C and continued in the Paris conservatory until the dawn of the 20th C, which was essentially based on improvisation. He also describes how choristers in Toulouse were still improvising at St Etienne right up until then.
This is so fascinating to learn, as I remember listening to what was labeled as music from Al-Andalus and thinking how wonderful (western) medieval choirs would sound with such an ornamentation. I'm from the Balkans so I'm aware of the Byzantine tradition, and I wondered, well, maybe they did so further west, but we just don't know it. I had read more about the history of dances, and had the impression that western Europe had undergone more changes, and therefore thought we were more musically conservative too. It's so funny cause once you imagine it, it seems so natural, and then you hear it and it really does strike you with how beautiful it is.
After listening to Ensemble Organum when I was in college, I always thought medieval polyphony sounded like Middle Eastern music, especially on the long notes and final cadences.
thank you . really interesting : )
Interesting. As an early modern historian I'm looking at those maps going. 1492. Its the changing of world trade from land routes/silk road/the Lavant to global, oceanic, trade bypasing the Levant that probably caused that glacial break.
Sigue adelante, se necesita ma música como la que haces
Ich liebe 🤟 deine Musik.
Douce Dame Jolie Cover when?!!!, you're so articulate with your words!!
It makes sense that the influence would of been there since the oboe in its early form, the shawm, came from the Middle East similar instruments. It would be cool if you did a video tracing the history of the guitar through commonly used techniques that supposedly were greatly influenced by some guy named Ziryab from the Middle East, or at least according to a guitar class I took. Love your content!
Edit: at 20:00, I’ve been schooled lol
Would you consider uploading a performance of a familiar Gregorian chant melody (for example "Puer natus est"), sung as you think it might have been sung in Western Europe 1,000+ years ago?
I come from the quattro province region (Alessandria, Pavia, Piacenza, Genova) where music keep itself away from the changes of time. Many songs are reinterpreted by any group or person, especially the trallalleros, even though they belong in the same group.
I love this video so so so much because I’m Greek and I always think that medieval music and dances (especially the ones that sound less like modern western cathedrals 😂) remind me VERY much of Greek traditional music and dance from only 100-200 years ago
Man c'est tellement important le travail que tu fais, y a ben du monde qui pourrait tirer des leçons importantes de tes vidéos - je parle là des gens qui croient sincèrement au monolithe (qu'ils veuillent le défendre ou le démonter) de la Culture occidentale, qui serait basée sur la Raison et sur certains style d'art plus ''développés'' que les autres. On peut croire que l'esthétique forme rinqu'un fond insignifiant pour les idées et les valeurs, mais il suffit de regarder l'effet d'un défi posé à ce fond esthétique pour voir que ça colorie les idées à un niveau bien plus profond. Ça choque souvent au départ, mais l'histoire et la culture deviennent inifiment plus intéressantes une fois qu'on accepte à quel point elles sont compliquées pis pleines de trésors inattendus. Keep truckin mon gars
P.S. Est-ce qu'un jour tu comptes faire un peu de musique acadienne, ou bien plus généralement des Maritimes ou de Terre-Neuve ? Je serais vraiment curieux de voir ce que ça devenait entre tes mains :)
OMG at 17:00 it’s Marc Mauillon, my Medieval and Renaissance polyphony teacher for two years at the Sorbonne Université !!! Amazing singer of mélodies and opera and passionate teacher (Il sortait une blague toutes les cinq minutes, pas facile de rester concentré :P)
In Romania we have slavic-greek-roman-turkic influences, because we are in the intersection of the coultures! And we have a tinie procent of thracic ancestors autohton influences in music.
Thank you for the video, loved it. I think in the West we tend to separate ornament from melody in a similar fashion like we separate Australia and South-America. 2 continents yet one earth. I don't think it is necessarily a wrong and 'lifeless' approach yet there are also other possibilities :-) Like North and South-America ornament and melody can be distinct yet connected.
At the time you're talking about it would seem to me that the "East" (Byzantium, the Islamic lands and North Africa, and even farther east) were regarded by many as being much more "civilized" and "cultured", so it would seem natural that music styles would have been imitated and copied all over the place. After all, this is what seems to have been the case with the sciences, technology and, certainly literature. My introduction to Iranian music (via some very old UNESCO recordings!) had the booklet by Danielou, and he suggested that this was perhaps the way Homer would have sung his poems to his high ranking audiences. Can you imagine?!
Very intriguing idea about Homer, although I’m not sure how plausible that would be. Homer’s poetry is entirely dictated by the scansion of syllabic metre-and therefore the poetry can only be recited syllabically, otherwise the entire structure of it falls apart. That said I could see how the long vowels could be demarcated from the short ones using melismas
@@faryafaraji Thank you very much for that. Of course, Danielou's suggestion I took as an intriguing possible way to look at a very ancient artistic performance style, a way to somehow conceive the situation in some kind of actuality. This is, frankly, how I approach your own works on Achaemenids or Seljuks, etc., a glimpse of possibilities - informed possibilities, which is even better. Merci de nouveau.
@@robertagajeenian7222 Thanks very much, although I need to point out that my intent with tracks like the Achaemenids is not to even slightly infer that they is an informed possibility of the music of that era-I compose them as entirely modern music and they’re only meant to evoke the ancient eras thematically, and in no way musically :)
@@faryafaraji Yes, it's precisely the evocation that I appreciate. My imagination can do the rest.
@@robertagajeenian7222 Beautifully said!
I would love to hear where the more modern style came from for the western liturgical chant. I love all of this, and want to know more.
The Orthodox Church has 8 Tones that don’t change and rotate, one each Sunday but there’s other music old chant and modern chant written in every Country. (Russian, Greek, Estonia, and America).
I attended the first Liturgy based on early African American Gospel music.
Here it is…
ruclips.net/video/jBGiJ0ptrgg/видео.htmlsi=AE-uNAHQEBFaEA0s
The director of Capella Romana is in the Choir (check them out on RUclips if not familiar… they sing Byzantine more than anyone I know)
This was eye opening for me as a person with bulgarian roots. I knew balkan music and middle Eastern (well just Turkish to my understanding) are leftovers of byzantine traditions. But I never knew western Europe had a similar heritage
good stuff
Thank you Farya. This was an insightful explanation. Speaking as an amateur Armenian folk musician as well as church altar server/singer, there are a lot of false narratives that have floated around the Armenian community for the past hundred years stating that our chant and our folk music was under "Arab Islamic and Turkish influence" thus making more Middle Eastern. Obviously this is a far out notion that presupposes that the Ottoman Turks influenced the native peoples of Anatolia more than we influenced them. But what I was not aware of was that Western European nations (even France and England!) once employed similar singing styles. Thus, even the influence of Western culture on Armenians in Cilicia during the Crusades would not have resulted in much musical stylistic change. I guess my primary further question, how did early polyphonic music sound like when Western European music was still operating in this manner? Did the spread of polyphony bring about the demise of the "warbling" melismatic style?
Amazing! Really interesting! Please record some European medieval music sung properly...take my money!
Fascinating video! I agree with it 100%. Due to modern politics we've been accustomed to think of east and west as two very separate entities but we forget how historically these two worlds were much more connected than we think.
As an example of a medieval use of "embellishments", for lack of a better term, is this Dominican chant of the Genealogy that was traditionally sung during Christmas.
m.ruclips.net/video/ZdhHXgBqxEM/видео.html&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newliturgicalmovement.org%2F&source_ve_path=MTM5MTE3LDI4NjY0LDI4MjQwLDIzODUx&feature=emb_title
Dear Faraya, Graindelavoix are practicing this idea too. Their artistic leader is an admirer of Organum.
Mr. Farya the Gigachad I'm waiting for some great Epic Iranian song especially in Old Persian or in Middle Persian language.
really cool to hear french in that style
La différence entre la musique écrite et la musique chantée ou jouée était substantielle au Moyen-Age. Exemples portés avec "Douce dame jolie" de Guillaume de Machaut (1300-1377).
You should also talk about the evolution from this to Bach's music which usually included church music.
you know, a thing that comes up a lot is that when many english speakers think "western" they mean medieval france and everything that's close to that, so german, english, maybe italian, etc. They forget that was mostly forests and barbarians for the longest time, and the "west" went from rome to greece, two places that are much more to the east than that, not to even mention the eastern roman empire, that most europeans pretend to never have existed at all.
You bring up a good point about the concept of the "West" not being a fixed notion, and it'll change depending on you who ask. My only take on your comment would be that your view on the West isn't more canonical than the others: most serious modern historians today would absolutely object to calling Ancient Greece and Rome part of the "West", and I certainly would too.
Ancient Greece and Ancient Roman cultures are fundamental precursors to Western civilisation but the concept of Western civilisation absolutely requires the Middle-Ages and the uniting factor of Christianity, and overall Judeo-Christian thought, to bring it about. In Antiquity, Greece had far more in common with Iran and Phoenicia than it did the Gauls; it wasn't "Western," by any stretch of the imagination, although many of its salient cultural features would lay the foundations for what is typically considered Western today.
In the same way, the Eastern Romans themselves didn't consider themselves Western. They very much saw themselves as opposed to the Roman Church's lands, as separate from them. To consider the Medieval Eastern Romans as Western and part of the same cultural reality as the French and the English negates the view the Eastern Romans had about themselves, and who are we to contradict how they felt about themselves?
@@faryafaraji you know, I hear that this termn "western" comes from "western christianity" and "eastern christianity", so the eastern roman empire very much wouldn't be "the west", but even thought the eastern Romans wouldn't think of themselves as "western" they would have thought of themselves as Christians, and that very much puts them in the same boat as the people in France or Italy.
Also there's the idea of what identities existed at the time, as you mentioned, but there's also what are modern identities *descending from*, so even if the Greeks wouldn't recognize some Englishmen as their own, the modern English very much recognize the ancient Greeks as their own, and it's only proper, because their culture is the daughter of greek and german culture.
@@faryafaraji Allow me to add some minor corrections to your overall balanced comment. There is no such thing as "Judeo-Christian". It's a trendy word that's floating around a lot these days. Nevertheless, the concept of "Judeo-Christian values or tradition" has no basis in historical reality. In fact, the "Judeo-Christian tradition" was one of 20th-century US neoconservatism's greatest political inventions. Although they share Hebraic roots, Christianity and Judaism are two separate and distinct religions that gave rise to different traditions and worldviews. Furthermore, I see what you mean, but when you read Roman and Greek sources, the Romans and, to a degree, the Greeks actually viewed themselves as "Western" compared to Persia, the Levant, and Asia Minor. Certainly, Greece had cultural influences from Phoenicia or Persia. Anyway, what we call the Middle East today was THE East from the Roman perspective; thus, to the Romans, the Near Eastern culture was an exotic one. With that being said, I appreciate your expertise on the evolution of ancient and medieval music.
@@carlomariaromano4320 I think you’re using the term geographically and I’m referring to the cultural sense of the word.
Ancient Rome didn’t have a concept of “The Western” or “European” identity as opposed to the Parthians. To them, the Gauls were as foreign to them as the Egyptians. This is very different from today, where Italians think of themselves as part of a broader Western identity alongisde the Scottish.
Yes, Ancient Rome understood that they were geographically to the west of the Near East, but that doesn’t mean they perceived themselves as the same “Western” identity of today, united in identity with the Germanic tribes, in contrast to the oriental Iranians. Projecting these modern notions onto 2000 years ago is anachronistic. The German tribes were just as exotic to the Romans as the Near East. This is what I mean by the lack of a concept of “Western-ness” to them. The Romans weren’t chanting “glory to Western civilisation” when fighting Surena on the field of Carrhae, neither was Alexander. Alexander’s sense of identity was Greek, and the Romans’ was Rome.
As for Judeo-Christian, you’re entitled to your opinion that it’s just a trendy modern word. As for me, my personal
academic background in history shows me it’s more than a mere trend of the likes of Tiktok, and there’s a useful applicability to it when studying history, but I won’t argue with anyone on that.
I'm afraid, with all due respect, you missed my point. I was well aware that a Gaul or a German was as alien to the Romans as an Egyptian, Syrian, or Persian. However, when reading Cicero, Juvenal, and Tacitus, as well as Cato the Elder and other Roman historians, it's clear that the Romans had a concept of "Eastern cultures "and the "East". The thing is, the Romans didn't feel particularly close to the cultures of the Eastern world and also not to the cultures of Northern Europe. Some Romans even had problems with the Greek culture. During the Roman Republic, many complained about Greek influence on Latin culture, as can be read in contemporary Roman literature. Anyway, the term "Judeo-Christian" was coined recently and isn't based on historical fact. Plus, many secular and religious Jewish people, including rabbis, oppose this term as misleading, citing the religious, cultural, and historical differences between Judaism and Christianity. It seems that you think one can lump Christianity and Judaism in one basket just because they both originate in Judea. The point is that Christianity and Judaism are two separate religions with fundamentally different core doctrines that have given rise to distinct cultures, traditions, arts, and music. Furthermore, the New Testament interprets the Old Testament for Christians, and the Talmud interprets the Torah for Jewish people. This is an important fact to understand why both religions differ from each other. In addition, the Byzantine and Latin Churches arose from the union of Christianity with Roman imperial culture and Greek philosophical ideas. Believe it or not, Islam is more similar to Judaism than Christianity is. Besides, I know Christian and church history in depth. And there was not such a thing as "Judeo-Christian" values or cultures in the eyes of the early or medieval Christians or Church. What today is referred to as "Judeo-Christian" foundation and culture was usually called the "Christian Occident" or "Christian West". Once again, this is not a matter of opinion or preference, but of fact. The reality is that the term "Judeo-Christian" was also coined to exclude other religions, particularly Islam. When, for instance, US politicians, especially Neocons, claim "Judeo-Christian values," they're almost always describing Christian values but want to pretend they are being inclusive of Jewish people. Moreover, modern academics use this term because it's trendy, not because it's historical; let's not pretend that there are no trends in the academic world. So, it doesn't make sense to use the modern, made-up term "Judeo-Christian" culture to understand the past. This would mean imposing modern perspectives on history. I genuinely hope you are open to my arguments.
can u put up a link for the song at 13:43 i cannot find it online but i love the sound
ruclips.net/video/DQMw6BBX2ts/видео.html It’s this one, the sampled passage is around 3:35 :)
@@faryafaraji thanks a lot man, keep up the work
6:58 in the terms of Byzantine music what is written is what you sing and the "ornamentations" are written in the manuscript
You can hear it a lot in Occitan songs, they are sometimes incredibly melismatic and my mom often points out how "Arabic" it sounds haha
My boy looking like a Assyrian polymath and scholar.
Would you be able to create some music in this style but with more secular topics?
What we generally need is a shift of perspective: the Western (European) civilization is NOT a continuation of the Classical Greco-Roman civilization. That is a myth, brazen propaganda. The Western civilization starts (roughly) with Charlemagne and then spreads in all directions. This new civilization also brought with it its own special musical taste. The southern shores of Europe and much of the Balkans have never been fully Westernized, so people there simply kept (and developed) their old cultural traditions that do connect them with the Classical Greco-Roman (Mediterranean...) world.