The beginnings of music

Music (Greek musa – muse). Music is a kind of art that affects a person through sound images that reflect his different experiences and surrounding life. In contrast to spatial arts (painting, sculpture, architecture), music, along with choreography, theater and cinema, refers to the temporary arts. One of the main features of music is that it really exists only in performance, in a living sound.

Music is a great, never fading art. It surrounds man, from ancient times to this day. Especially a lot of music is heard today – in the age of radio and television, the age of gram-audio and video recording, when concerts are available, and almost everyone can learn to play on any instrument.

Yes, there is a lot of music, music of very different – ancient and modern, the so-called “classical” and “light”, performed by professional artists and amateurs. How to understand, navigate in this vast sound sea? How to learn how to distinguish genuine from counterfeiting in musical art, a meaningful musical piece from a popular but empty hit? How to feel the beauty of a serious work, which at first may seem boring and uninteresting, but really deep in figurative meaning and truly beautiful?

The only advice is to try to know more about the music art, its history, language features, the laws on which musical creativity is built (of course, constantly listening to a lot of good serious music).

Who invented the music?

Nareda was once lost in thought, when suddenly the sounds, extracted by a slight blow of the wind, deceived his ears; They all continued to grow, becoming more beautiful and more diverse.

So the ancient Indian poem draws that primordial moment, when suddenly from “nothing”, from the slight breeze of the breeze the first music arose. God Nareda ancient Hindus and considered the main god of music, which gave humanity this great art. According to another legend, the first person who knew music was the god Brahma. He shared his discovery with the sage Brahata, and he already told people about the beauty and power of the impact of music.

Suppose that Narada and Brahma were indeed the pioneers of music. But how, then, to be with the Greek gods Apollo and Artemis? After all, according to one of the widely known myths, Artemis, having shot one of the onions, was the first to discover that the whistle of the bowstring is very beautiful. Buy an apartment. The street is a forest park town of Chelyabinsk. The discovery of Artemis was so appealing to Apollo, that he himself began to extract from the “murderous” weapons, as the myth says, charming sounds.

However, this version of the origin of music is refuted by the Greeks themselves. Apollodorus in his “Mythological Library” – one of the most authoritative sources of Greek myths – claims that at first moths appeared, and then their half-brother and sister – Apollo and Artemis.

According to legend, the muses were nine, and five were directly related to music: Euterpe was considered the patroness of all music art, Melpomene was in charge of singing and funeral music, Terpsichore – choral singing, Erato – wedding songs, Polyhymnia – hymns in honor of gods and heroes. And although Apollo is usually called the leader of the Muses or Apollo Musaget, as it appears from mythology, the Muses showed themselves in the art of sounds even before Apollo.

Probably, most peoples have legends telling about the origin of music, about gods and heroes who discovered it to people. Such a coincidence is not surprising.

Whatever sounds of nature a person encountered in antiquity, he attributed their appearance to supernatural forces. It seemed to him that these sounds were emitted by certain beings, mysterious and invisible. For example, as the German epic tells, it’s not thunder, and the evil spirit Thor, angry at people, sends his crooks to the ground; In the murmuring waters of a river or a waterfall, a tender and gentle Nek sits and sings his measured song to the mermaids; And in the depths of the rustling forest, Ban laughs or growls Ryubetsal.

The myths, legends and legends of ancient peoples about the origin of music are poetic and diverse. But who in our day will believe that the gods and spirits have sent down music to people?

In ancient times, a man at every step met with the music of nature – the singing of birds, the roar of animals, thunder, the murmur of a stream, the noise of trees, the sounds of the surf. Surrounded by these diverse sounds, he, of course, tried to imitate them. Thus, human communication with nature was one of the main sources from which the music he created was consciously created.

But there were other, no less important sources.

If you carefully look at the first, most primitive musical instruments (you can see them today in ethnographic or musical museums), you can easily find that they differ little from simple tools. This similarity is not accidental. Most of them have a clearly “working” origin. This is noticeable in the form of these instruments, and in the manner of the game for them. The usual stupa in which the grain was pounded, a clay pot or a pumpkin bottle was covered with leather, and the instruments – later called drums – could be considered ready.

Stringed musical instruments were also born out of tools. They represented (and in this the Greek legends did not make a mistake against the truth) is nothing more than imitation of the bow.

The winds were no exception. To transmit the signal to a farther distance, the primitive musician amplified the sound of his voice, shouting into the sink or reed tube.

So the person opened music. He discovered in the nature around him, and also in connection with labor processes, outside of which he could not exist.

Imagine the life of our distant ancestors. In most of their most important activities – hunting, fishing, tree felling – the necessary condition was the collective labor. The key to success in everyday affairs was coherence. Therefore, the rhythm was based on the joint actions of primitive people.

It is possible that elementary chants began to be formed precisely from rhythmic cries that facilitated joint physical work. This is only one of the probable ways of their inception. Another could be a choral dance, which appeared again thanks to the workings of a man of antiquity.

Choral dance, obviously, appeared as an imitation of the habits of animals during the hunt and the very process of hunting. It served not only as a primitive game, but also helped to strengthen the most important condition of primitive life – collective cohesion, coherence of actions. The simplest “instrument” that provided the rhythmic basis of the choral dance was the human voice. There is reason to believe that in this way – in the choir – a melody was born.

How exactly the first melodies created by the person were formed, it is definitely difficult to say. Apparently, the tone for the whole group of dancers was set by the tribal chief or specially appointed for this purpose sang. The rest imitated him, adjusted to his singing.

However, accompanying the choral dance could be not only a voice. Primitive man used for this purpose a rhythmic tapping on some objects (often all the same instruments of labor), which became prototypes of percussion instruments. This, strictly speaking, was already music.

But only if communication with nature, work and an innate sense of rhythm helped people discover music for themselves?

Rhythmic processes are characteristic of many living beings. And even an instinctive melodic gift is inherent not only to man, it is most subtly developed in birds. However, only man was able to become a conscious creator of music. This was due to a whole set of conditions, three of which we already called. But there was also a fourth, without which music would never become an art, it is an artistic gift of a man.

It was artistic flair that prompted our distant ancestors to try to convey episodes from their lives in stone, clay, ivory, or using rock carvings. He also led to the creation of the rudiments of musical art.

“The bird sings, extracts sounds from its larynx, but does it feel like a person, all the passions that he alone is able to feel alone on earth with a measured addition of sounds? Alexander Radishchev, a Russian enlightener of the eighteenth century, wrote: “It was not birds of preaching that taught man in music: it was his own ear, which, deep into the voice of other animals in the voice, every sound, with thought conjugated, carries directly into the soul.”

From the above words, we highlight the latter: “… sound, with thought conjugate, carries directly into the soul.” They laconically conveyed that which resolutely raises a person over all other living beings: the ability to think and experience. And not just ability – need! Without it, this great need, as well as without the conditions we have already named, there would be no musical art.

So, imitating the sounds of nature and participating in collective labor processes, an innate sense of rhythm and artistic flair – all this together, multiply multiplied by human inquisitiveness, and gave life to the art of sounds.