Howard Goodall's Story of Music

Subject: RE: Howard Goodall's Story of Music
From: Will Fly
Date: 28 Jan 13 - 02:33 PM

Exactly, Les - he made that point. So the "real" truth is open to debate. I merely quoted that website partly to demonstrate the fuzziness around the subject. And I did say "almost"... :-)

I'm aware that this is a folk forum (among other things), but to say that folk music played little part in Goodall's story is - well - tough. We have to work with what we know. He did make the point that Luther (for example) took folk tunes as the basis for some of his hymn tunes.

Subject: RE: Howard Goodall's Story of Music
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 28 Jan 13 - 02:23 PM

Hi Will, good point of yours above - what were 6C 'folk' songs like? Lost fro ever I guess.

But from your link:

"Early church music was monophonic. That is, the whole choir sang the same melody in the form known as plainchant, where the tune follows the rhythm of the words. It is also known as Gregorian chant on the basis that it was all devised by Pope Gregory the Great,"

Howard said nothing to with St Greg

Les

Subject: RE: Howard Goodall's Story of Music
From: Will Fly
Date: 28 Jan 13 - 02:16 PM

Well, here's an interesting and typical web site about the early music topic - almost identical in substance to what Goodall was saying:

http://medievalwriting.50megs.com/word/music.htm

I suspect that the "high end art music" side of things is going to be the theme - what else do we know about those very early days? Let's see where he goes in the next five programmes.

Subject: RE: Howard Goodall's Story of Music
From: greg stephens
Date: 28 Jan 13 - 02:13 PM

I dont mind posh.I love posh. I do mind people, from whatever walk of life, making generalisations about music when they mean western European classical music.

Subject: RE: Howard Goodall's Story of Music
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 28 Jan 13 - 02:08 PM

I saw the article but didn't read it.

Let's get away from the posh Howard thing - it is irrelevant. I really don't care about that.

It is his story - ok fine, but it looks like it's going to be the story of high end art music. Maybe not

Subject: RE: Howard Goodall's Story of Music
From: greg stephens
Date: 28 Jan 13 - 02:05 PM

Will F: if anyone can tell me what 12th century church music sounded like, I'd be interested to hear, too. It wasn't recorded! Howard's welcome to his guess. I am welcome to mine.

Subject: RE: Howard Goodall's Story of Music
From: greg stephens
Date: 28 Jan 13 - 02:02 PM

Exactly: he said it was his history. He should have said it was "his music". Monks invented singing in octaves, for God's sake!

Subject: RE: Howard Goodall's Story of Music
From: Will Fly
Date: 28 Jan 13 - 01:59 PM

I think Goodall made it very clear from the beginning that the "story" of music, as such, was his own story.

He also made it clear that, until notation started to appear, we have absolutely no idea - other than conjecture - what "popular and folk music" sounded like. He linked early church music to the Roman era - but drew no conclusions. If anyone can tell me what, say, 8th century AD 'folk' music was and sounded like, I'd be very interested to hear.

As for his personal background, who gives a shit.

Subject: RE: Howard Goodall's Story of Music
From: greg stephens
Date: 28 Jan 13 - 01:57 PM

What particularly annoyed me(or rather incensed me)was Howard G's article in the Guardian trailing the series.In it he namechecked a lot of classical usual suspects(Beethoven, Schubert, Dvorak, Bach, I think) plus a couple of poppies(Adele and someone). The article also referred at the end to the fact that Euro composers often pillaged the works of black artists for material, oftoen unacknowledged.The article was copiously illustrated by photos of the mentioned people. All the white Europeans, classical and pop, were correctly identified in captions.The people in the photo used to illustrate the"black music pillaged by Euro musicians" story were Jelly Roll Morton and the Red Hot Peppers. They were not identified by name(just referred to as jazz).Need I add further comment?

Subject: RE: Howard Goodall's Story of Music
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 28 Jan 13 - 01:27 PM

Love the Dawkins quote!

It's not that Howard is posh - I think the point that some of us are trying to make is that it is very much a route through church and art music with odd nods to popular and 'folk' music.

Subject: RE: Howard Goodall's Story of Music
From: GUEST,sciencegeek
Date: 28 Jan 13 - 12:45 PM

I've enjoyed his earlier shows... they were shown in the US on the Ovation channel & I have them on my DVR. I also got the DVD set for myself & friends... the later shows are on youtube & got most of them saved on the laptop.

yes, he is very British establishment.... but he does try to transend his early upbringing... LOL

and no one in their right mind goes to a television show for serious research.... unless that channel is The Research Channel or some other university supported venue....

I look forward to getting to see the show... most likely youtube will carry the individual episodes... and draw my own conclusions at the end.

"By all means lets keep our minds open... but not so open that our brains drop out."   Richard Dawkins

Subject: RE: Howard Goodall's Story of Music
From: GUEST,Frug
Date: 28 Jan 13 - 12:02 PM

Yes not bad. Looking forward to seeing it develop further and see how deep he goes. Quite like his style posh boy or not.

Frank

Subject: RE: Howard Goodall's Story of Music
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 28 Jan 13 - 11:53 AM

Spot on leeneia, to be fair to Howard much of the stuff about bone flutes and cave paintings was his introduction.

I trust this wont turn unpleasant and then become another 'what is folk thread'. Clearly another programme could be made lookin at the details of variuos kinds of folk/ traditional/you know what I mean kind of investigation

Subject: RE: Howard Goodall's Story of Music
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 28 Jan 13 - 11:45 AM

"half as long gives the octave"

You're right, s&r, I made a mistake. I just measured it on my dulcimer, and the fifth is 2/3 as long, not half. But I consider my point still valid - we can find the important intervals of the octave, the fifth and the fourth by simple means.

The trouble with music history is that so much of it has never been written down. Not just the very old stuff, but the ordinary stuff of the common people. We will probably never know, for example, what words certain old tunes had before they became hymns. People were poor and illiterate, paper and ink were expensive, and everyone, from rich to poor, had more important things to worry about - like surviving.

That said, I'd like to mention that I saw a documentary about a newly-dicovered painted cave in France. The doc was called "Cave of Forgotten Dreams." In the cave, they found a flute which they date at 30,000 years old or so. An archeologist picked up an exact replica of it and played the tune for "The Star-Spangled Banner" on it.

At one time there probably was a drawing that showed one stick figure playing the flute while another covers its ears and says "That's not even music, it's just noise!" but the drawing has weathered away.

Subject: RE: Howard Goodall's Story of Music
From: Marje
Date: 28 Jan 13 - 11:07 AM

I wouldn't dismiss Goodall quite like that, but I do think he looks too much to the Church's and establishment's music and forgets that there will almost certainly have been other, much older music taking place for thousands of years before the Christian Church began to write it down.

He referred in passing to how some Lutheran hymns were based on folk songs, without bothering to examine how the folk melodies got there in the first place, what lyrics they used before the religious ones were grafted on, or what happened to those songs that didn't get adopted by the Church.

His comparison of The Archers' theme tune with a religious piece in 6/8 time failed to pick up on the fact that jig-time is a very natural rhythm for dance, and that most rhythmic music has a close link with human movement (marching, dancing, baby-rocking, etc).

Just because music wasn't written down, it's wrong to assume that it was insignificant or non-existent before written notation. Surely a musicologist can piece together something of the music of bygone centuries, even when no written record of it remains.

Having said all that, I found quite a lot of interest in the programme, and will carry on watching.

Marje

Subject: RE: Howard Goodall's Story of Music
From: s&r
Date: 28 Jan 13 - 10:57 AM

Half as long gives the octave.

I watched this with interest which waned quite rapidly. I've set the video to record the rest just in case the angle improves.

Stu

Subject: RE: Howard Goodall's Story of Music
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 28 Jan 13 - 10:30 AM

Good one Greg

Les

Subject: RE: Howard Goodall's Story of Music
From: greg stephens
Date: 28 Jan 13 - 10:28 AM

This was not a history of music. It was a posh boy's history of posh music. With a few passing nods to hiphop etc: the pedagogues of the world always like to pretend to be "with it" and down with the kids(it never works).Others have picked on his ludicrous claim that singing in octaves was invented by some Christian monks in whateverAD. Ditto drones. How on earth did the poor benighted inhabitants of Asia and Africa manage to make music before we went and showed them at bayonet point? You can build silly sets for cutely curly-haired Howard to talk in front of till the cows come home,but he'll still be totally ignorant about music. Even if he wrote the Blackadder theme.

Subject: RE: Howard Goodall's Story of Music
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 28 Jan 13 - 10:23 AM

I'm not sure about that, but surely the fourth and the fifth have been known from the time of Pythagoras (300 AD or BC, I forget which) and perhaps before. I found a website once which said the fifth was known to the ancient Egyptians. Could be, because to get the fifth, all you have to do is take a string and make it half as long.

I tried to watch the BBC show but was denied because I'm not in the UK.

Subject: RE: Howard Goodall's Story of Music
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 28 Jan 13 - 09:56 AM

True enough leeneia,

I am not familar with music from agricultural, pastoralists and the remaining few hunter-gathers but surely some of those communities have amazing sung music full of complex harmonies and rhythms?

Les

Subject: RE: Howard Goodall's Story of Music
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 28 Jan 13 - 09:47 AM

"Don't children and adults do this naturaly?"

I agree with you, Les. I'm sure we do sing naturally in octaves. When a father (for example) joins his little daughter in "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," he doesn't have to tell her about frequencies and that she must double the frequency when she sings with him. They both just do it.

Subject: RE: Howard Goodall's Story of Music
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 28 Jan 13 - 09:35 AM

We really enjoyed it. Good points well made.

Vague feeling of disquiet though. Music is an extremely complex and deeply rooted feature of human behaviour - hinted at by the discovery of stone age (?) bone flutes and so on but .............. since we have been speaking for a lot longer than 200,000 years isn't reasonable to assume we have been singing for most of that time?

If we have been singing for a very long time did we need to wait for relgious and 'trained' musicians of the middle ages to work out singing in octaves? Don't children and adults do this naturaly?

Les

Subject: RE: Howard Goodall's Story of Music
From: Wolfhound person
Date: 28 Jan 13 - 09:17 AM

I saw it too and enjoyed it, but there were surprising gaps I haven't quite put my finger on yet. Maybe the next episode will clarify things.

Paws

Subject: RE: Howard Goodall's Story of Music
From: GUEST,G-Force not logged in
Date: 28 Jan 13 - 09:12 AM

I never knew that's where Lurpak came from.

Subject: RE: Howard Goodall's Story of Music
From: GUEST,Joe G
Date: 28 Jan 13 - 08:50 AM

Yes I saw it and totally agree - Goodall strikes a fine balance between not being patronising and explaining things clearly. And he didn't jet off around the world to present the programme. I loved that duo from Monteverdi's Poppea which I had never heard before. And I covet a Lur!

Subject: Howard Goodall's Story of Music
From: Will Fly
Date: 28 Jan 13 - 08:11 AM

Anyone else catch "Howard Goodall's Story of Music" on BBC 2 TV from Saturday evening last? I was out gigging at the time and have just caught up with it on the BBC iPlayer.

I thought it was an excellent programme - straightforward, clear, informative and fun, with some excellent musical examples. The next 5 programmes in the series should be well worth a listen.