Ecos de Grecia: la cuestión pendiente. Bases históricas de la polifonía vocal e instrumental en el Mundo Clásico
No source explicitly supports the assumption that Greeks and Romans did not practice polyphony, nor does any surviving source point to the contrary. The second remark of Girolamo Mei remains in force nowadays: in contemporary pagan sources this fact isn't mentioned, nor is it in Christian c...
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| Tipo de recurso: | tesis doctoral |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2017 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) |
| Repositorio: | RiuNet. Repositorio Institucional de la Universitat Politécnica de Valéncia |
| Idioma: | español |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:riunet.upv.es:10251/77995 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://riunet.upv.es/handle/10251/77995 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Música Musicología Organología Historia Polifonía Grecia Roma Cristianismo Instrumentos Musicales Análisis Histórico Antropología Cultural |
| Sumario: | No source explicitly supports the assumption that Greeks and Romans did not practice polyphony, nor does any surviving source point to the contrary. The second remark of Girolamo Mei remains in force nowadays: in contemporary pagan sources this fact isn't mentioned, nor is it in Christian contemporary or later sources after the fall of the pagan world. After this event, we find a historical gap for almost seven centuries (which not only affects music sources but to a greater extent) regarding the existence and dissemination of devices and instruments. Some of them reappeared with a similar design (bagpipes, lutes), while others apparently had not survived (double aulos). In musicology the practice of polyphony is presented as a late product resulting from a progressive and linear evolution of musical thinking (cognitive and social), claiming its alleged appearance in the history during Middle Ages in the West. According to this view, before this time humans did not practice polyphony, implying that Greeks and Romans didn't either. But, as we firstly mentioned, no surviving source makes any reference to this fact. This kind of historical and psychological arguments remain the basis of our vision of the music from these cultures, despite the problems and inconsistencies when confronted with findings from other fields. Archeology, for example, has been recovering mosaics and other pieces that confirm the presence of polyphonic (or multiphonic) instruments for many centuries. We are also aware of the existence of hundreds, maybe thousands, of festivals, competitions, concerts, and all sorts of group musical activities during the same period. References to many amateur and professional choirs, together with a wide dissemination of theaters and odeums (roofed concert halls), along with festivals and dramatic-musical shows, are indirect evidence of the importance of instrumental and choral music ensembles for Greeks and Romans. These two major elements - on the one hand, choral music and shows, on the other a broad dissemination of instruments capable of producing different simultaneous sounds - are the central body of our argumentation. This Thesis documents about 150 sources (both literary and iconographic) related to these instruments, along with several hundred allusions or quotations (inscriptions, written works, etc.) to pagan choral practices. Altogether close to 500 sources are presented, one-third of them are direct (those involving the instruments), and the remaining are indirect (those involving the choirs). The Thesis assumes that the organized presence of a large number of voices, repeatedly and socially accepted implies the plurality of sounds (of course, monophonic choral singing not excluded) and also that we cannot base its denial on aesthetic (or cognitive) disability of these peoples. The presence of polyphonic phenomena in non-Western musical traditions is accredited across different cultures through time and geographical space: diatonic choirs of the Pacific already surprised early Europeans when they arrived there in the XVIIIth century. Epirote singing at Balkans, Georgian singing in the Caucasus, along with many other European folklore traditions with characteristic scales and intervals, as well as polyphonic singing of Aka Pygmies and other African ethnic groups, indicate a poly- or multi-vocal past, independent from the Western music historical development during the last 1.200 years. This Thesis does not discuss the evolution of Western music from Hucbaldo onwards, but merely some claims related to the music of glorious peoples many centuries ago. On the one hand, we find a historical vacuum regarding non-church music sources (of any kind), and, on the other, a few Christian works of the Vth and VIth centuries and a few late works near the millennium. Those, however, do not provide any practical nor technical related information to daily musical activities in profane domains. |
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