Culture Will Always be the Center of People and With Culture Comes Music: A Brief History of Classical Music

The Medieval period (450-1450) was a time of expressing vocals in a spiritual form. Music was in fact sacred rather than secular which then became knowingly in the Renaissance period even though some still existed in the Middle Ages. During the Medieval period the popular genre was the Gregorian chant credited to Pope Gregory I as the creator. This genre generally was vocalized by monks to praise and service God. The names of monk composers weren’t recorded or known like musicians today but Hildegard von Bingen and Guillaume de Machaut are two of the composers the book mentioned. In this genre there were no instruments which made this type of music monophonic Later on polyphony was developed, where multiple voices or instruments created another line of melody.

A difference from music from the middles ages and today is that “today we receive information over the Internet, but during the Middle Ages, people believed in the power of divine revelation” (Listening to Music, 8th Ed). This means anyone can create and recreate pieces of music by looking onto notations or simply by listening through the media in comparison to before where a “special” power was given to composers or they simply were destined to praise God. Careers of musicians nowadays tend to rely more on the business side rather than doing it for a religion or self benefit in spiritual terms. This leads on to the topic of music sharing and transferring.

Music could not be shared through a media source, instead it had to be learned in person listening one on one. The careers of modern time classical musicians mostly depend on popularity. Since music today is widespread, people have different options to choose from, making it difficult for genres such as classical music to be in the daily lives of people.

In a cultural perspective, the poor media sharing system from before only allowed music and genres to be spread locally rather than to different areas. As opposed to classical musicians today, where their music is shared through different sources including musical notations which influence a greater amount of people all over the world. These listeners can then recreate their version of the original just by looking onto the music notation as many have done so. Demographics is a big cultural factor in what has led to such changes.

It’s interesting to see that modern music may sound absurd to older people and classical music may sound boring to younger people. In an area where youngsters appear to reside, the music listened to will be totally different from an area of elders. Neither of the different musical genres are wrong, different generations just have different perspectives. Nevertheless just how pop music is the mainstream of today’s media, there was a time where classical music remained predominantly large for years. It may still be large in areas of Europe as the mainstream to certain traditions, religions and cultures but for the most part it has stepped down if we’re talking globally. In conclusion, what is important is that culture will always be the center of people and with culture comes music.