The Story of Music

[Stephynbouby]

I don’t know if any of you have heard of Howard Goodall. He is a composer and also presents music programs for radio and TV for which he has won many awards. He narrated a series of 6 one-hour programs that charted the history of music. It was aired on BBC2 in 2013. I only caught it by accident. My wife spotted it in the TV listings and thought that it would be interesting. After the first few minutes of the first program, I was glued to the TV whenever the series aired. I’d never considered music in the way Goodall did. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say, I’d never even considered music at all. I just took it for granted. I expected it to be there whenever I wanted to listen to it and hadn’t really considered that there was a time when it wasn’t. Yes, I’d seen music develop between the 50s and the present day, but I saw it more of changing styles rather than in evolutionary terms.

Today, people have access to vast libraries of music at the flick of a switch but it wasn’t always this way. In centuries past, people could go weeks or even months without hearing any music at all. Even as recently as the 19th. century, people were lucky if they heard their favourite symphony more than about 4 or 5 times in their entire lifetime.

It isn’t just recording devices which had to be invented and developed. The music had to be developed too.

Musical techniques didn’t just happen by chance. Someone had to develop them first and each new development added to the richness and variable nature of music.

In Lascaux, France, cave paintings have been found which date back to about 15,300 BC. The paintings can be found in a number of caves in the system, not just in one location in one cave. What’s also been discovered is that the paintings are located at points where resonance within the cave system is at its maximum. This suggests that early Man may have produced ‘music’ of some rudimentary kind and that the paintings and ‘music’ may have been involved in some kind of ritual. At the very least, it would appear that music was also very important to early Man.

Program by program, the development of music is plotted from its earliest beginnings to the current day. I can’t recommend the series highly enough.

For those interested, here’s where you can find the first program in the series of 6.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0Y6NPahlDE

Enjoy.

[bob_32_116]

Sounds interesting. I suppose I'll seek it out sometime when I have the time to listen.

[bob_32_116]

The programmes seem to be no longer available directly from the BBC's site - however it looks as though they can all be found on YouTube (why does that not surprise me?).

Listening now to the first episode.

[Stephynbouby]

The programmes seem to be no longer available directly from the BBC's site - however it looks as though they can all be found on YouTube (why does that not surprise me?).

Listening now to the first episode.

In my first post on this topic, to be helpful, I did post the Youtube address of the first programme in the series, having tried, and failed, to find it on BBC IPlayer myself.

I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did.