Howard Goodall on BBC Two

[Old Grumpy]

Contributors to this board may also be interested in these audio downloads from the BBC website - Radio 3 Story of Music in Fifty Pieces

OG

[Stunsworth]

Watching it now. Those Lurs were playing the opening of Rheingold weren't they? <grin>

[Nick Armstrong]

Watching it now. Those Lurs were playing the opening of Rheingold weren't they? <grin>

[JFLL]

That apparently was commented on in one of the broadsheets (? Torygraph) according to SMP on Breakfast this morning. OG

Good-oh. (But on second thoughts does that make me a Spluttering Colonel from Tunbridge Wells?)

[Lateralthinking1]

It was very informative on the early development of western music and its increasingly complex structures. I felt after the programme that I had quite a lot of new insight into the structure of music itself. The polyphony particularly interested me.

There were though explanatory gaps on the development of music elsewhere and how and why it was incorporated into western sacred, and later secular, traditions. He only mentioned briefly the folk song, new instrumentation and rhythmic patterns from Muslim Spain. We were never really told how the few hundred troubadours led to the radical approaches to music in the churches. They were left as separate worlds, the more distant remaining mysterious, and relegated to a Late Junction style night slot.

That point about the Muslim influence in music was politically noteworthy, given the attack on music from terrorists today. The choice of Cat Stevens, latterly the peacefully inclined Yusuf Islam, for the version of Eleanor Farjeon's 'Morning Has Broken' subtly reinforced that modern political point. Goodall is only four years older than me and I understood his examples. It is no coincidence that versions of 'Morning Has Broken', 'Amazing Grace' and 'Gaudete' were all in the Top 20 pop charts between 1971 and 1973.

[Pabmusic]

It was very informative on the early development of western music and its increasingly complex structures. I felt after the programme that I had quite a lot of new insight into the structure of music itself. The polyphony particularly interested me.

There were though explanatory gaps on the development of music elsewhere and how and why it was incorporated into western sacred and later secular traditions. He only mentioned briefly the secular folk song, instrumentation and rhythmic patterns from Muslim Spain. We were never told quite how the few hundred troubadours led to the radical approaches to music in the churches. They were left as separate worlds, the more distant remaining mysterious, and relegated to a Late Junction style late night slot.

I thought that point about the Muslim influence in music was politically noteworthy. The choice of Cat Stevens, latterly Yusuf Islam, for the version of Eleanor Farjeon's 'Morning Has Broken' subtly reinforced a modern political point. Goodall is only slightly older than me and I found his choice of examples useful. It is no coincidence that versions of 'Morning Has Broken', 'Amazing Grace' and 'Gaudete' were in the Top 20 pop charts between 1971 and 1973.

Well noted. It's an amazingly complex subject to tackle, and a potential minefield of non-PC-ness. For it is the case that Western music has produced the only system of notation that allows one person to write the music and another to play it without any knowledge of the composer of his or her culture at all. This meant in turn that composers could produce large, more complex pieces, because the players didn't have to memorise it all. Of course Western music has absorbed things from other cultures - note the 'Turkish music' (bass drum, cymbals and triangle) that so many 18th-Century composers loved (Beethoven too) - and where did we get timpani (nakirs) from? But it's the ability to write this down and play it centuries later that distinguishes Western music.

There were other written systems - Goodall showed one from the Greeks - but their secrets have been lost. And there are various types of tablature used now (for instance by members of gamelans here in the Philippines) but they tend to be little more than the equivalent of the chord symbols written above the text that some buskers use - and in any case they have now absorbed so much 'Western' style that it's difficult to identify what is truly old.

[Pabmusic]

...and where did we get timpani (nakirs) from?...

I can't resist this. David Munrow and the Early Music Consort had performed before the Queen Mother, and they lined up backstage to be introduced, holding their instruments. The player of the nakirs (or nakers) was well known as an eccentric who was quite capable of being indiscrete about his instruments, which were attached round his waist. David Munrow was a little concerned with what the naker player might say to the QM. Other members of the band shared his concern, but they needn't have worried.

The Queen Mother reached the naker player, flicked the skins with a finger, and passed on saying, "They're a fine little pair".

[MrGongGong]

But it's the ability to write this down and play it centuries later that distinguishes Western music.
.

Is it ?



This is a piece from the Honkyoku repertoire (approximately 13th cent)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honkyoku

Why one might need notation says a lot about the organisation of a culture and it's view of itself in the world, but that's part of the unmade series about music that looks at it in a more global context.

[Pabmusic]

Is it ?



This is a piece from the Honkyoku repertoire (approximately 13th cent)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honkyoku

Very good. It hardly diminishes the point I was making though, does it?

[MrGongGong]

Very good. It hardly diminishes the point I was making though, does it?

it wasn't meant to
but , as i'm sure you are aware, there is a tendency to look at things always from a eurocentric perspective and assume that "ours" is the only sophisticated culture which simply isn't true.

It does contradict what you said though.......

[Pabmusic]

...Why one might need notation says a lot about the organisation of a culture and it's view of itself in the world, but that's part of the unmade series about music that looks at it in a more global context.

That would truly be a fascinating series. I am slightly uncomfortable in talking about "a culture", but it's a convenient shorthand, I suppose.

[Pabmusic]

it wasn't meant to
but , as i'm sure you are aware, there is a tendency to look at things always from a eurocentric perspective and assume that "ours" is the only sophisticated culture which simply isn't true.

It does contradict what you said though.......

I agree with you about Eurocentricity, but I did say that "There were other written systems - Goodall showed one from the Greeks - but their secrets have been lost." Perhaps I should not have implied that all their secrets have been lost. And I'm very glad they haven't been, too.

[Lateralthinking1]

Apparently half of all troubadour works that survive are from 1180–1220. Most observers say that the tradition appears to have begun in Aquitaine and Gascony in the early 1100s, only reaching far parts of Italy and Spain from Occitania in the 1200s. There are 11 competing theories on the origins. Only one is they are Arabic although of the 11 it is thought to be among the plausible.

Ezra Pound wrote in his Canto VIII that William of Aquitaine "had brought the song up out of Spain". Lévi-Provençal is said to have found four Arabo-Hispanic verses recopied in William's manuscript. According to historic sources, William VIII, the father of William, brought to Poitiers hundreds of Muslim prisoners. J B Trend in his 'Music of Spanish History to 1600', a book first published in 1965, thought that the troubadours derived their sense of form and even the subject matter of their poetry from the Andalusian Muslims.

Personally, I don't understand how the tradition could have travelled to Southern Spain and originated in Southern Spain. There is a contradiction. Meg Bogin, an English translator of the trobairitz - the female troubadours - says in Grove that "a body of song of comparable intensity, profanity and eroticism [existed] in Arabic from the second half of the 9th century onwards." That rather supports the argument that the origins of such music are indeed further to the South and not actually in Europe as many claim.

European origins may well have been suggested for European reasons. The theory makes Europe appear more advanced than other parts of the world. I would say Bogin's own wording could imply to an extent that the Europeans are still putting themselves first. If her statement is true, the European rather than the Arabic body of song would be "of comparable intensity" as it came afterwards!

[Nick Armstrong]

I understood Goodall & his team to be saying that troubadour song originated in الأندلس, Al-Andalus... Moorish Spain, i.e. it came via the land mass we now know as Spain, but from Moslem - Arabic roots and tradition. I didn't perceive any contradiction.

[Lateralthinking1]

I understood Goodall & his team to be saying that troubadour song originated in الأندلس, Al-Andalus... Moorish Spain, i.e. it came via the land mass we now know as Spain, but from Moslem - Arabic roots and tradition. I didn't perceive any contradiction.

Yes indeed they did and I think I agree with them but how then are we to view 12th C rayonnement where they journey from France to Southern Spain and Italy in 100 years? Sorry, I am not quite getting this point. Was it a case of coals to Newcastle?