Origin Of Western Classical Music

The word ‘classical’ connotes something of lasting value, something conceived with certain standards in mind. The word classical conveys structural order, a clear sense of form, design, and content. The story of classical  music is old and ongoing one, which encompasses many different styles and developments. In general. classical music has tended to reflect the times.

Like all the other art fields, music tends to shape itself according to the then public tastes and demeanor. In classical music, entertainment should be the last thing to think about. Classical music art works as an art first, then discipline, rules and principals, aesthetics moreover extracted from the limitations of rules. As stated before, classical music systems the art form by certain rules and theories. A good answer to the question “what is Classical music” is “a music which does not make money.

 Origin of western classical art start with dark ages around the mid sixth century. That was the inception of music in the west in the form of chants sung in the church service. Music  evolved for the purpose of worship at God’s place, which was initiated in unison, i.e., without harmony, only a single melodic line.
 In around twelfth century,  monophonic music was introduced by the then music composers (like Hildegarde etc.)which means ‘one voice music’ (mono -one, phony- voice). Monophony was introduced to enhance the haunting beauty and expressions to these chants and worship notes.
 
 In the end of twelfth century, another new style of music showed up — polyphonic music, (poly- many, phony-voice). Anticipated by its nomenclature, polyphonic music involved many voices or several melodic vocal line instead of one, which provided a different transcending level to chants. Two or three sounds came simultaneously , each one independent but synchronizing together. Evolution of polyphonic music was a dramatic development which established rules about harmony and tonality.
 
 On this very concept of polyphonic style of music, some ancient Greek musicians started creating the music theory. Diving deep into the polyphony and analyzing the scientific aspects of this very concept, they invented the basic foundation of music – Twelve notes of the scale and their relationship. This scale carrying twelve notes was later known as chromatic scale on which western music art form is placed on.

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