The Bible and Music

The historical roots of music in the early church were quite interesting. I especially thought the evolution of the instruments was fascinating from a both a musical and a scientific background. I am still very interested in how music that stems from ideas presented in the bible influenced African American music in the south. The conversation about “Dry Bones” sparked my interest and I haven’t been able to shake it from the first class. In the second class we discussed “monk music” which is actually somewhat familiar to me. Many of my friend in high school were taught by monks who were very traditional, including musically.

I am getting used to having an 8am class, but it is difficult to stay awake and pay attention.  I am excited for the concert on the 3rd, and I think that it will spark an interest for me in the music. I will have more to write about after our guest speaker tomorrow.

It was interesting seeing the origins and where our current music evolved from. I didn’t know how advanced some ancient music was, involving string and horn instruments at the same time. Also, how they managed to essentially create the concept of beats and rhythm with simplistic drum. Examining early religions by looking at figures like Baal, which I didn’t know about previously, was interesting in another way too. I’m excited to bridge the evolutionary gap of today’s music and religion to the earliest roots of it. Learning that path is something I’ve never really seen before.

During class on Monday, we listened to a piece that sounded like the classic Christmas carol, “What Child Is This?” but quickly learned that further back in history, the piece was actually originally titled, “Greensleeves.” This was very interesting to me because I didn’t expect a well-known Christmas carol to have been originally scored for a different piece entirely unrelated to the Christmas season. I really like that we are learning more about pieces that we thought we knew but actually have very intriguing histories behind them. After talking about “Greensleeves,” I find myself wanting to look into the origins of other Christmas carols. Was “What Child Is This” the only Christmas carol to start off being unrelated to the season? Or did many other well-known songs find their origins in unexpected places?

Yesterday in class, we started by listening to a familiar song. I recognized the song but could not come up with the name. It turned out the song was “Greensleeves”. Then we moved on to the songs we had to listen to for homework. I enjoyed learning more about the different instruments used and illustrated in pictures. I learned about some of the instruments in my world religions class in my senior year of high school. This class in many ways reminds me of that class. While my high school class focused on many different religions, this class sticks to the Bible. I enjoy that because I know more about the Bible. I look forward to applying my previous knowledge later in class.

I also found it very interesting when we were discussing that if you take away the music and leave the lyrics, you have poetry. It makes me think that anything can be turned into music. I believe a lot of music develops from other forms of music. Like how the second link we had for homework sounds like Gregorian chanting, yet it is Ancient Greek music. I like to think that all music is inspired by other forms of music.

Yesterday in class, we were asked to identify a song that professor played first us in class. The song was identified as ‘What Child is This.’ The actual beat and melody of the song though was from Greensleeves.’ ‘Greensleeves’ is a traditional English folk song and tune. There is a widely believed legend that was composed by King Henry VII of England for his lover Anne Boleyn. The song was probably written between 1491 and 1547. With the history of the song, I thought it was very interesting how songs can seem to be very similar in aspects like melody, beat and even lyrics.

Similar to some of the students in our class on Monday, ‘What Child is This’ was more commonly known, but it was really ‘Greensleeves.’ Professor McGrath told us that we have the opportunity in future class times to talk about similar songs and why they may have the same rhythm or purpose.  ‘What Child is This’ was set to the tune of ‘Greensleeves.’ When I listened to how similar both these songs were, I was reflecting on how sometimes when I am listening to music on the radio or on my phone I think it is another song. It is often amusing to see other people try to sing the lyrics to a song, only to realize it is a completely different song from an artist they might not even know. It is very interesting to me that music in completely different generations and time periods have nearly identical features in their songs. One thing I want to improve on is expanding my knowledge with songs like this and seeing how similar songs still have their own value and story behind them.

Today in class we talked about the oldest music we knew and tried to place the time period that each piece was from. We talked about different instruments that people used to play on, instruments that play in a specific key and others that don’t. Something that was really interesting to me was that the depictions of people playing instruments almost always showed women playing the drums. This was not what I would expect because in modern culture, drummers are usually male.

Another thing that was cool today was when the professor played Greensleeves for the class and asked what we thought it was. I immediately recognized the melody as Greensleeves from my experience playing in orchestra in high school, but the general consensus was that it was What Child is This. I am not familiar with that set of words, but evidently What Child is This is a more popularized version. This brings up the concept of the evolution of music and language with society and how music changes with language changes and society develops.

One common theme I picked up on through a lot of the music we listened to in class and from what I listened to outside of class is that these songs/hymns all contain an older instrument, such as the lyre or the shofar. These very basic instruments provided virtually the only beat through the music. The tune is something you would perceive as very different from modern music. The earliest Christian manuscript, “Oxyrhyncus hymn,” contains many of these elements.

From my perspective, while listening to these songs, it reminds me of something you would hear in a movie. I know in lots of military movies I have watched, there are always some sort of music similar to this, especially when it is set in the Middle East. That is just a connection I made.

For me personally, I actually really enjoyed listening to “Greensleeves,” I found it to be very relaxing and the rhythm was to my liking. It is weird to think that songs with no music are just lyrics or poetry. I never really thought about it that way, so it was interesting to think of music in that way.

Today’s class focused on the early development of music. Before today’s class, I had never considered that written music hasn’t always looked the same throughout time and across different countries. When I was in middle school we were required to learn how to play an instrument, so I used to know how to read simple sheet music, but I never thought of it as a language. It makes sense that written music would resemble the written language of a culture, so it’s interesting that nowadays music notes don’t resemble written language at all.

Although the instruments used during ancient times had limited musical ranges they could play in, I still think they sound very beautiful and that, perhaps, their limited ranges contribute to that beauty. There’s something very appealing about the simple sounds the instruments make that is similar to how the monk chants are calming or appealing.

Before we had class this morning, we were told to listen to the Hurrian Colt song. This song is a hymn and dates back to 1400 BC. The Ugarit music is the oldest written in existence and this fact was what first grabbed my attention. I listened to it a few times before class and was trying to depict some of the words. The song itself did not have a lot of harmony, however we took a look at some of the lyrics in class. I found it very interesting to look at the lyrics and see how they differ with modern music today. The ancient song was produced on tablets in a place called Ugarit, which is located in the Ancient East in Syria. There was a large library full of these tablets that the people used to record music and other forms of writing. These tablets had a variety of languages.

The lyre was an instrument that was played in today’s class and I found its noise to be appealing. The lyre is a small stringed instrument that was used a lot in ancient times and is similar to a harp. The difference between a harp and a lyre is a harp has strings that enter directly into the hollow body of an instrument. A lyre has strings that pass over the bridge and transmits vibrations. Although I could not understand much of the Hurrian colt hymn, I enjoyed discussing it in class and looking at the simple instruments that produced the music.