Evolution of Music from 1400 BC till the present day

[GrandizerII]

This one I really love. The "No way, no way" song





More info on Johannes Brassart:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Brassart

[GrandizerII]

Another Marian hymn that I'm personally not into, but here it is:





More info on Ave Regina caelorum:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ave_Regina_caelorum

More info on Josquin des Prez:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josquin_des_Prez

[Rev. Rye]

I got into Josquin after deciding to listen to all of Steve Reich's works, and while looking up some background information on his pieces, particularly the later ones. This one comes to mind:





(Interestingly, around this time, there was a boy from an Orthodox Jewish family working at the store, and he said that he heard some song from a Kibbutz in there somewhere. After all the time he spent in Israel working on The Cave, that actually makes sense.)

Also, I forgot that we'd gone past Perotin:




Fucking Hell, I'm going to have to go into overdrive once we get into the Baroque period.

[GrandizerII]

And now finally a song I'm very familiar with (though I didn't know the title and history behind this song until very recently):





Greensleeves is said to have been composed by King Henry VIII (of England), but experts in the field tend to disagree.

More info:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensleeves

Oh, and apparently "Greensleeves" referred to a woman who would make love on the grass, and as a result, her sleeves would turn green from the grass. Or something like that. Credit to a YouTube commenter for this.

[GrandizerII]

Next clip:





I'm about to blaspheme because this is Monteverdi we're talking about, but I can't seem to get too excited about this type of music (though the trumpeting at the start was nice to hear).

For more info:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Orfeo

[Rev. Rye]

A work of music by a composer who killed his wife, and he seems to have been wracked by guilt to the point where, later in life, he hired a servant whose job was to beat the crap out of him every day. And that pain comes out in his music, creating wild levels of chromaticism that's rarely seen in music until the 19th century. And here's the documentary this performance came from, directed by Werner Fucking Herzog.

[GrandizerII]

A work of music by a composer who killed his wife, and he seems to have been wracked by guilt to the point where, later in life, he hired a servant whose job was to beat the crap out of him every day. And that pain comes out in his music, creating wild levels of chromaticism that's rarely seen in music until the 19th century.

I'm no expert in music, but it does sound like this music was composed by someone who'd gone insane.

[Rev. Rye]

Fun fact: I once wrote a story that was a fake review of a fake musical called Vase de Noces: The Musical. It's very strange, which makes sense considering that it was based on a notorious avant-garde film most famously known as The Pig Fucking Movie. (Information, with no images outside of the [G-rated FKG-0-rated) German DVD cover art, here.) Since you probably wouldn't want to actually watch it even if it wasn't banned in Australia (which I think is your home turf), much of the bizarre shit I describe is actually PART OF THE ACTUAL FILM. And this includes some interludes where Baroque/Renaissance choral music is playing while we see chickens just standing around doing nothing. In the play, this is represented by two interludes in the middle of each act where the farmer and the pig go off stage and a small chorus sings a small Renaissance piece while stock footage of chickens standing around and doing nothing plays. "Moro Lasso" plays during the second act, after he hangs the children he has with the pig for rejecting humanity and the pig drowns herself in response. And, in the first act, after finally consummating the deed (after a musical number compared to "Contact" from Rent), the chorus plays this Monteverdi piece:



And then, they scatter and the film stops like it was just a flash mob that the people in charge went along with.

For the record, this musical does not actually exist, and I don't expect it to actually come into being.

[GrandizerII]

Since you probably wouldn't want to actually watch it even if it wasn't banned in Australia (which I think is your home turf), much of the bizarre shit I describe is actually PART OF THE ACTUAL FILM.

My single younger self would've loved the challenge, and I used to watch a lot of bizarre shit back then (including Japanese coprophagia). You are talking about someone, who when he was still a little kid, regularly watched his father (former butcher) slit the throats of domestic animals, letting the blood seep out. But yeah, now that I no longer pirate, I don't challenge myself with this sort of stuff anymore, lol.

Back to the music, I was wondering: were you virtually born enjoying this type of music (I mean, Monteverdi and Gesualdo and such), or did you have to work hard at appreciating them? I find a lot of the music around the period we're currently covering in this thread to be quite boring, with a few exceptions of course.

[Rev. Rye]

Like I said in another thread, it can take several listens, and it really helps if you start with looking at artists you like, and seeing who they liked and/or were influenced by. It can take several degrees of separation, and the more successful hits, the broader your interests can become.

Like, for instance, you like the Beatles, so you look at artists that influenced them. Then you get into Elvis, and his early Sun recordings, and then you look at other Sun Records artists who worked with Elvis around that time, and then you get into Johnny Cash, and before you know it, you're more open to country music than you used to be. And for classical music, one of my biggest gateway hubs was, of all people, Glenn Gould (and, to a lesser extent, Stanley Kubrick), so you end up with a listener who listens to a lot of Baroque and modern classical music. Also, classical.net, which has a good selection of starter classical pieces.