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Hildegard was a twelfth-century German abbess, mystic, artist, poet, herbalist, and composer. Her musical morality play Ordo Virtutum is sometimes considered the first opera. She wrote it for the nuns at her abbey. In 2012 Pope Benedict XVI declared Hildegard a Doctor of the Church, a title given to only a few of the most important…

From Open Culture: “In the early 1950s, archaeologists unearthed several clay tablets from the 14th century B.C.E. . . These tablets ‘contained cuneiform signs in the Hurrian language,’ which turned out to be the oldest known piece of music ever discovered, a 3,400 year-old cult hymn.” Listen here: Written around 700 B.C., this music from ancient Greece is…

Crumhorns. Medieval harp. Shawms. Psaltery. [youSpanitube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD_1Klq63pk&w=560&h=315%5D Troubadour Song: Hat tip to James Novembre: Haitian troubadour music of the twentieth century. Like medieval troubadour music, it’s about love: Devotional song from Catalonia: Spanish chant from the early Middle Ages: A saltarello:

Loud. Soft.

  From the much-talked-about Vulture interview with Quincy Jones: “Is there innovation happening in modern pop music?   Hell no. It’s just loops, beats, rhymes and hooks. What is there for me to learn from that? There ain’t no [redacted] songs. The song is the power; the singer is the messenger. The greatest singer in…

First of all, don’t eat too much, advises the great German (later naturalized U.S. citizen) operatic contralto Ernestine Schumann-Heink (1861-1936), pictured above. Madame Schumann-Heink singing “Silent Night” in German.

Musical texture is like a fabric of sound. This is a sonic fabric using one thread, i.e. monophony: the chant “Ut queant laxis” for the Feast of St. John the Baptist, which dates back at least to the 9th century. Note that, even though many voices are singing, the texture is monophonic — the sonic equivalent of this.…

It sounds more complicated than it is. It’s just math. This is a very pure example of rhythmic subdivision: a demonstration of percussion instruments used in Japanese Kabuki theater. This piece is a good example of subdivision. It starts out with long, slow notes, then with each variation, the rhythm is subdivided into smaller note…

A blog post inspired by Ryan. The Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer pioneered the discipline  the Soundscape Studies in the 1960s. Here he explains what a soundscape is: Many of Schafer’s compositions attempt to mimic the sounds of the natural world, using voices and instruments. He uses innovative notation techniques in his scores: Interesting: the…

Inspired by Emily. The Mikado is a comic opera written in 1885 by the English composing team of W.S. Gilbert (lyrics/libretto) and Sir Arthur Sullivan (music). It is set in an imaginary version of medieval Japan, and is typically performed by white singers made up to appear Asian (a.k.a. “yellowface”). This is a typical production: In…