Music

This book originated in Bishop Yohanna Gregorios’ dissatisfaction with the lack of a study which would show where the music of the Syrian church came from, how it was accepted in the church, the basis on which it entered the church, the regional variation in chanting traditions, and the development of church music through time.

Taking a wider historical scope, this booklet examines the auditory environment and the temple of Herod as well as first century synagogues. Music in borrowed spaces and house churches of early Christianity conclude the study.

This volume examines the perception of music’s past, in all its historical, geographical and cultural breadth. The wide-ranging collection of papers address the interpretation of past music cultures from the earliest records of antiquity until the present.

This volume gathers six essays from papers presented at the 3rd Annual Lawrence J. Schoenberg Symposium on November 19-20, 2010. The essays explore both the technology of inscribed musical expression in the Middle Ages—especially in regard to notation—and the role that modern digital technologies play in facilitating the study of music manuscripts today. As the manuscript evidence shows, medieval music as written text was both expressive and prescriptive in shaping music-making practices, performance, and reception.

ICONEA is the only publication exclusively dedicated to the archaeomusicology of Near and Middle Eastern cultures from its Sumerian origins to the dawn of Christianity. ICONEA also publishes papers of comparative archaeomusicology with contemporaneous neighbouring cultures.

This book is a catalogue of the idiophones acquired by the Department of the Near East of the British Museum since the mid-nineteenth century. It includes clay rattles principally from Ur, dating from the third millennium BC; shell clappers; copper and bronze clappers and cymbals from Nimrud and from other prestigious locations and a remarkable collection of bronze bells mainly from Nimrud, unearthed by Layard around 1850. The book gives an accurate description of the objects along with former references and a comprehensive bibliography.

This paper contemplates the various means by which the Ancient Greeks preserved information about their musical history, highlighting oral/aural tradition and the transition to literacy when inscriptions could capture information in roughly datable contexts. Music history sources and motives are also examined.

Hickmann describes a 17th century work by Guaman Poma chronicling the first period of the Conquista. Details from this book are comparable to archaeological finds of musical instruments that have since disappeared. The author provides illustrations of ancient Andean instruments.

This paper contains an overview of Pre-Columbian music research between 1880 and 1920. Figures and the interdisciplinary direction of the research movement are discussed in detail. Many of these early studies remain ignored, which is a concern for music historiography.

Proceedings from the British Archaeological Association contain music studies from 150 years ago. Lawson raises a historiographical concern for these early discussions, as many of the authors are forgotten.

The pioneers who contributed towards the formative period of Scandinavian musicology (ca. 1915–1940) were highly interested in ancient music. Kolltveit describes approaches by pioneers Hammerich, Panum, Andersson, Norlind, Leden and Tveitt in their cultural, political, and academic contexts.

Lund describes the development of Scandinavian music history from 1797 with the first discovery of lurs in Denmark to the modern discipline as it is established in research during the 19th and 20th centuries. Systematic orientation came in the 1970s.