A lot has been said in the various 1632 discussion threads on Baen's Bar, as well as in print, about how early modern Europe's populace really weren't too different from people of today. They were technically adept, given the tools that they had, so they would have been able to reproduce a great deal of modern technology. It might have taken them some time, but it would have been possible. The people would have adapted to practical technology quickly.
Early modern Europeans were highly literate, frequently in multiple languages. They were sophisticated in both philosophy and in religion. And they would be very quick studies when it comes to politics.
Even in the arts, for the most part the people of Grantville would have had little to teach them, aside from photography and sound recording. These are technologies that are really relatively straightforward once modern chemicals and tools are available.
There is one area of modern life, however, where the natives of the 1632 era would not embrace the up-time offerings with open arms: music.
Why? Because the 350+ years between their era and ours produced some of the most radical changes in musical thought and practice imaginable. More changes occurred in that time frame, and faster, than had occurred in western European music in the previous thousand years. From 1800 on, every generation produced music rather different from the previous generation; even significantly different.
Music, as much as—perhaps more than—any other art form, is learned and heard and judged by the ears of a cultural context. That's why they wouldn't just swallow the up-time music and musical forms. If you plucked a German from 1631 Mainz and dropped him into New York City today, he would have been as shocked and appalled and bewildered by the music of today as if you had plucked a South Sea islander from a secluded Pacific island in 1920 and done the same thing to him. (Okay, that is perhaps a bit of an exaggeration—but not much of one.) The down-timer culture and societies were at the bottom of that 350+ year learning curve, and it would take them time to learn to like the music; not 350 years, but more than a year or two.
This article is going to focus on the sound of music, on the forms of it, on how people hear it, and why it will take a while for most of the up-time music to catch on. But there are technologies to music that will now be available to the down-timers, so let's first do a quick review of those.
When you try to research the history of the violin, you quickly discover that in the 1632 time frame there were no standardized instrument forms such as there are today. There were a variety of bewildering names: viol, violon, vihuela, viola, viola d'amore, viola da gamba, and others.
What we would think of as modern violins had by this time been pretty well standardized in overall shape, proportion, and number of strings – 4. The other three instruments of the modern string family—viola, cello, and double bass—were a long way from standardization. The viola d'amore, for example, typically had fourteen strings; seven that were played, and seven more that were pitched an octave higher that were sympathetic resonators. And the viola da gamba, despite its name, was a very large instrument, larger even than a modern cello. Double basses were just beginning to make their appearances. String counts for violas, viola da gambas and double basses varied with the luthiers who made them, or perhaps the patron or artist who commissioned them, but five or six or even seven strings weren't unheard of.
Even though 1632 is pre-Stradivarius, Grantville really has nothing to teach seventeenth-century luthiers about these instruments, other than showing them the latest refinements in proportions and preaching the advantages of standardization. The standardization required longer necks, which required fewer strings to provide the needed notes to play the music. It also required the metal wrapped gut strings that would be forthcoming from Nürnberg in the near future. The strings would hold more tension than other materials to handle the tuning changes that would be coming and which also allowed for longer necks to provide the needed notes to play the music with fewer strings. The standardization will happen quicker in the 1632 universe because of the up-time examples.
However, one big technology advance that can be brought to the down-time instrument crafter and players is the refinement of the bow. The modern bow design was established by Wilhelm Cramer and Francois Tourte in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. I won't list the individual modifications, other than red pernambuco wood from Brazil becoming the wood of choice for bows (still true today), but the result was a bow that could be held lightly with the fingertips, rather than having to be grasped with the whole hand. This in turn allowed for much greater flexibility in playing style, which was the necessary development for the rise of the violin as a virtuoso solo instrument.
Strings—Guitars, etc.
The guitar was definitely available in 1632 in various forms. Known by the names gittern, vihuela, guitarra, or vialle, it tended to be smaller than today's instrument, with a body that was narrower in proportion than today's instruments. It had a smaller sound than today's instruments, partly due to the use of gut strings, and partly due to the smaller size. The common pattern had four strings, usually doubled to be four courses of two strings each that were pitched an octave apart. By the late 1600s, luthiers were beginning to add a fifth course.
There were renowned guitar luthiers in Paris, Venice and Spain.
Again, Grantville would have little to teach the luthiers about guitars, other than to show them the larger bodied modern instruments as templates and teach them about using metal strings when desired.
The luthiers and performers will be intrigued by the banjo, however. (Concerto for Banjo and Orchestra by George Telemann? It would be possible.)
Mandolins are available in down-time forms. If any modern versions exist in Grantville, down-time luthiers may identify some refinements. Otherwise, the presence of up-time guitars may also cause some down-time experimentation with changes to mandolins.
For electric guitars, see Electronic Instruments.
Harps have been around for thousands of years, and large floor standing harps weren't uncommon in the seventeenth century. The one technological improvement that Grantville could introduce would be the tuning pedals that allow certain sets of strings to be raised or lowered in pitch. This could be done even in the middle of a performance, allowing harps a similar flexibility as pianos. Pictures are surely available in some reference works somewhere in Grantville, either the encyclopedias or some kind of music history book or music dictionary in some music teacher's private library.
Organs in 1632 came in three main varieties.
First is the pipe organ, where sound is produced by pumping air through what amounts to giant whistles, some with brass reeds in them. These typically were rather large instruments, usually found in cathedrals or very large churches.
They are capable of large volume gradations, and a large organ will have a very large pitch range and a wide variety of timbres available to it. It was often referred to as the "King of Instruments." Grantville has nothing to teach the seventeenth century about how to make these, other than introducing electric blower motors to fill the wind chests instead of requiring manual or mechanical mechanisms to fill them.
Second is something called a regal. It in essence was kind of like a giant keyboard operated harmonica. There would be a case containing a variety of brass reeds, with a small keyboard on one side and a couple of bellows protruding out the back. This was a portable instrument. In some cases, they would fold up to the dimensions of a very large book. Again, Grantville would have nothing to teach the down-timers about this instrument.
Third is the "portative organ," which goes back to medieval times at least.By the seventeenth century, at least some of these had grown to 52-note, foot-bellows-powered instruments about the sizeof a console upright piano. These would be comparable to more modern portable organs with foot powered bellows. There may be one still in a back room in one of the churches, else someone of the older generations will remember them. They used to be a staple of the tent revival evangelism circuits. The down-time craftsmen might pick up some refinements if a modern portable organ is still somewhere in town.
These are all instruments which are very common in 1632. Grantville will have nothing to offer here.
Clavichord—keyboard instrument in which the strings were struck by a thin brass "blade." Strings were apparently single strands of metal, but were paired together. Sound was not large. Volume gradations (soft to loud) were possible. Sustained notes were only possible by continuing to hold down the key after the string was struck. Their range was narrow; typically three to four octaves.
Harpsichord—keyboard instrument in which the strings were plucked by a plectrum. In earliest versions, the plectrum was commonly leather, but over time crow quills became popular. As with the clavichord, strings were apparently single strands of metal. Volume gradations were not possible—the string was plucked one manner regardless of how hard or soft you hit the key. Again, sustained notes were only possible by continuing to hold down the key after the string was struck. Similar range to the clavichord.
Clavier—in French (klah-vee-ay), a term that simply means keyboard. In German (klah-veer) originally a generic term describing any keyboard instrument (including organ), but later it became a synonym for clavichord. Early pianos were sometimes referred to as hammerklaviers.
Here is where the down-time instrument makers hit the mother lode. The piano did not exist in 1632. The first instrument recognized as a piano (pianoforte) is credited to Bartolomeo Christofori of Florence, Italy, in the early 1700s. Four major innovations had to come together in one place for the modern piano to be produced: the use of steel strings; the wrapping of the lower pitched strings in copper (tightly, so they won't buzz) to produce strings that would stand up to a hammering to produce a loud volume; the cast iron harp to reinforce the sound board to hold up to the tension of the strings; and the pedal ensemble of a grand piano, featuring three different pedals that provide variation in how the sound will be sustained or muted.
The piano is truly remarkable in its volume gradations. An eighty-eight key grand has a pitch span of almost eight octaves, putting it on a par with the organ in those categories. There is nothing contained within a piano that will be beyond the capabilities of down-time crafters, and the impact the piano will make in the 1632 musical era cannot be underestimated. It is canon that Grantville had three full-size grand pianos (two of which are spoken for), a few baby grand pianos (one in a church, one or more in schools, one or more in residences), and an unknown quantity of upright pianos of various ages and conditions. Canon does not explicitly state that some of the older uprights are player pianos, but the possibility is there, which would be of interest to both clockwork makers and instrument makers alike.
The modern woodwind group covers flutes, piccolos, the oboe family, the bassoon, the clarinet family, and the saxophone family, of which only the flute would be directly related to instruments of 1632. Modern flutes and piccolos are typically made of metal, but are classed as woodwinds due to the fact that they were often made of wood well into the 1800s. Even today the bodies of piccolos are frequently totally or partially made of wood. Saxophones have always been hybrid metal and wood instruments, but are classed as woodwinds because they use a woodwind style mouthpiece with a reed and because the fingering system is like that of most woodwinds.
Most of the woodwind family would be new to the down-timers, but they would embrace them with open arms, because they would fill musical niches of older, less musical sounding instruments, such as the shawm and the serpent. It wouldn't hurt that the modern designs would for the most part be easier to play as well.
There are two technologies needed to make modern woodwinds a success. One is the Böhm key system developed by Theobald Böhm in the 1830s. It makes playing the instruments (metal or wood) easier, but it requires many many little tiny steel wire springs—preferably stainless steel—and very small screws. It simplifies the fingering, which allows for more notes and faster playing; and it allows for holes that are larger than a normal fingertip can cover. The other technology key is that during the last 350+ years, there has been a great deal of development in determining exactly how the bore of these instruments should be shaped and tapered. These relatively subtle changes allow instruments such as flutes to play much louder than the 1632 versions. Instrument crafters will mug each other to get to this information.
The big news here is valves. Down-time crafters could produce the horn forms already, including the trombone (sometimes known as a sackbut in this time). The concept of valves, however, will send down-time players and crafters into spirals of delight because of the flexibility they will provide the players. And when nickel is available for both nickel plating and for stainless steel, that will only make things better.
Instrument bore shaping and tapering improvements will be just as big an issue for the down-time brass crafters as for the woodwind crafters. Modern trombones sound much better than the 1632 sackbuts. Trumpets will sound better as well. French horns may or may not sound much improved—the ideal bore of a horn was determined fairly early.
Subtler technology improvements will come in the areas of improved mouthpiece designs, spit valves, and steel springs for all the valves. Working with up-time models will also teach the down-timers a few things about how to properly flare the instrument bells for the best sound. And the emphasis on standardization of models will also be felt.
Modern percussion instruments were basically adopted wholesale from the Turks in the eighteenth century when military bands began to be formed. Everything Grantville has will be new to 1632, including the pedal tuning mechanism for tympani, but none of it will be beyond the abilities of the down-time craftsmen. They will need some big pieces of cowhide for some of those drumheads, though.
These instruments are all subject to the limitation/requirement that reliable electrical power supplies of the correct voltage are available. That means for the first few years their performance venues would be pretty limited. It's also likely that most of them won't be reproducible by down-time craftsmen; at least not until the down-time electronics industry reaches a particular level that will begin making certain types of parts available. That may take a while; i.e., years, maybe generations for some of them. This would include electric pianos, synthesizers, MIDI instruments, and using computers to generate music.
I will speak to this one directly, since so much popular music utilizes it. Yes, electric guitars could be reproduced by down-timer craftsmen. Amplifier speakers are possible with down-time technology, although the magnets might be electromagnets rather than the modern types currently in use. The big problem with reproducing the electronic guitar technology is that it will be at least 1637, more like 1638-9, before tubes for amplifier power heads are available in commercial quantities. Combine that with the requirement for reliable power, and it will be hard to see these as much of a force on the musical scene for quite a while.
In this next section we will try to cover at a very high level some of the things that make music work. From time to time distinctions will be drawn between "street" music and "art" music. Street music would be the music of the common man, what he would hear in the homes and taverns of his town. Art music would be the music of the courts of the nobility and upper church prelates. Church music could find itself in either camp, depending on the style and who it was produced for. Most of the simple hymns could be classified as street music, especially since the words were often set to the tunes of popular songs.
Mode is a word that can have different meanings in music land, depending on whether you're talking about ancient Greeks or medieval music, or melody vs. rhythm. Most musicians would probably think of the medieval/Renaissance melody context if the word is mentioned. But to talk about modes, I first have to deal with some building block concepts.
Think of a piano keyboard. Find middle C on the keyboard. Now, move to the right up the keyboard to the next key that's a C tone. Counting all the white and black keys between middle C and the next C you have thirteen keys—eight white, five black. However, only eight of those keys (including both C tones) will be used in making what is frequently called a scale. From C to C is a tonal interval called an octave, based on the eight tones of the scale.
Now, between any two adjacent keys, whether white to black or white to white, is an interval called a half step. So, from C (white) to C# (black) is a half step. From C (white) to D (white) is a whole step. From E (white) to F (white) is a half step, because there is no black key in between them. Same story from B (white) to C (white).
Okay, now for the interesting part. A mode refers to an octave scale built on a pattern of whole and half steps. Different modes have different patterns. And pretty much all of the modes can be found just by playing octaves on white keys on the piano.
For example, from middle C to the next C up represents the Ionian mode. The pattern is:
C-whole-D-whole-E-half-F-whole-G-whole-A-whole-B-half-C
Or
1-whole-2-whole-3-half-4-whole-5-whole-6-whole-7-half-8
This Ionian mode also happens to be the major scale used in most music since not long after the 1630s.
If you do A to A on white keys only, you get the Aeolian mode, also known as the minor scale, and the half steps fall between 2/3 and 5/6.
If you do D to D on white keys only, you get the Dorian mode, where the half steps fall between 2/3 and 6/7. And so on.
There are several other modes, but you get the point. Composers, of course, can use a mode beginning on any tone. Strictly speaking, the mode is dependent on the pattern of whole and half steps, not the tone on which it begins.
The main point to grasp is that if you have different interval patterns in the melodic scale, these are also the notes you use in producing the harmony, especially in this period of time when the bulk of the church and art music is polyphonic—each "voice" line is its own melody. So, if I use a scale starting on G, I will have different harmonic chords available in Dorian mode than I will have in Lydian mode than I will have in Phrygian mode than I will have in. . . . You get the idea. The composer's choice of mode makes a big difference in the sound of the composition. Think of the difference between major and minor keys today, then think of having six to ten more choices.
There was a definite evolutionary process in the area of modes and tonalities. The drive to the established major/minor tonality "palette" was well under way during the 1500s, and was pretty definitely over in the late 1600s. Older 1632 musicians, although familiar with the major/minor concepts, would probably consider them somewhat "newfangled." Up-time music won't be totally strange to them from that standpoint at least.
There will be plenty of other issues for them to have collective apoplexy over.
This is actually a continuation of the discussion begun in the modes and tonalities section. Remember that modes were actually octave scales with differing patterns of whole steps and half steps. The Ionian mode has the half steps between 3/4 and 7/8, which is the pattern used in major keys. The Aeolian mode has the half steps between 2/3 and 5/6, which is the pattern used in minor keys. Between the time of J.S. Bach and about 1900, almost all Western European (I include North America in this category) music was written in either major or minor keys. Since 1900, a pretty high percentage of "serious" music uses other tonalities, but almost all of the popular music, including Broadway, is written in it. In modern musical usage, most music is written in either major keys or minor keys.
That part's pretty clear, I hope. But what are these sharp and flat things that keep showing up in music? The sharp symbol looks the same as the pound sign—a #. The flat symbol looks kind of like a lower case "b" with a pointy bottom. (The standard Microsoft symbols directory doesn't seem to contain it.) The purpose of a sharp is to raise a note's tone one-half step from its normal tone. A flat is to lower a note's tone one-half step from its normal tone.
This implies that note names can actually be used to represent three different tones on the piano, which is exactly the case. For example, let's take G. If a G note is indicated, it is the white key G on the piano. But if a sharp symbol is placed in front of the note, that turns the note into G-sharp, which would require the pianist to not hit the white G key, but to hit the black key immediately to the right of the G key. Similarly, if a flat symbol is placed in front of the note, that turns it into G-flat, which requires the pianist to hit the black key immediately to the left of the G key.
Okay, so what do the sharps and flats have to do with keys and scales? Remember that major and minor are defined by the patterns of whole and half steps. There is only one major key that can be played on white keys only, using only the natural tones, and that is C major. But what if we want to use a key starting on G? Using all white keys starting on G, you don't get the half steps in the right place to have a major key. So, to get the major key step pattern, instead of playing a natural F, you have to play an F-sharp. Same problem if we want to start the scale on F. To get a major key step pattern, instead of a natural B, you have to play a B-flat. And so it goes. Unless you start on a C, you will have to have sharps or flats. And some of the keys have a lot: B major, for example, has five sharps, and G-flat major has six flats.
It is common musical practice that for a given key, the sharps or flats for that key will be placed at the beginning of each line of music in the piece. It makes it easier to print and easier to read. Of course, the musician has to keep in mind what key he or she is in, or it starts to sound a little strange. Seriously, if you've played or sung for very long, it becomes second nature to you.
Everything said so far also applies to minor keys, except that the half-steps are in different places in the scale.
Most Western European music is based on what's known as tertiary harmony. As you can tell by the name, it has something to do with thirds. To explain that, let's go back to the piano keyboard. We talked about octaves and steps. The musical term usually used to describe those is "interval." An interval is a measurement of distance between one tone and another.
So, let's start with middle C again. From middle C to the adjacent black key (which is called either C-sharp or D-flat, depending on what key we're in) is a half step, which is a minor second interval. Moving from low to high/left to right, from C to D is a whole step, which is a major second interval. From C to E is two whole steps, which is a major third interval. From C to F is two and one-half steps, which is a perfect fourth interval. From C to G is three and one-half steps, which is a perfect fifth interval. From C to A is four and one-half steps, which is a major sixth interval. From C to B is five and one-half steps, which is a major seventh interval. And from C to C is six steps, which is a perfect octave. You can continue past that point (ninth, tenth, etc.), but for our purposes we'll stay within the octave.
First question is probably why the octave, fifth and fourth are perfect, while the others are major or minor? The answer goes way back into early music history, to the time when the church was the sole repository of musical learning. Gregorian chant is monophonic—only one melody, everyone singing the same thing. For a long time the church wouldn't accept the concept of multiple lines of music. Finally, they accepted the concept of a second line, but they still insisted there could not be dissonance of any kind, so they sang the second line on the same notes, only an octave higher. And lo, they blessed it, and it was perfect.
So more time passed, and some musician wanted to make the music richer. He probably was listening to some of that low class street music, liked what he heard, and wanted to sneak it into the church music. The next interval that they allowed was the fifth. They didn't understand why it sounded good to them—the understanding of acoustics was pretty limited back then. They didn't realize that the fifth interval is one of the major harmonics of a tone, and that by singing at the fifth they were singing at one of the acoustically harmonious points. It just sounded good. And lo, they blessed it, and it was perfect.
Pretty soon someone realized that a fifth is just a fourth turned upside down (or vice-versa). From low C to G is three and one-half steps, but from that G to the higher C above it is only two and one-half steps, which is a fourth. And lo, they blessed it, and it was perfect.
It's psychology interacting with acoustics. It sounds good.
Yes, you can sharp or flat a fourth or fifth, but you don't call it major or minor. If you sharp it, it's augmented, if you flat it, it's diminished. I supposed technically you can augment or diminish an octave, but in six years of formal training in music theory I never heard it.
Back to harmony. The next interval inserted into the harmonic mix was the major third, but when you put a major third in the middle of a fifth—C-E-G, for example—you get a structure called a triad, which is the first real musical chord. From C to E is a major third, from E to G is a minor third—hence the tertiary harmony label that we mentioned at the beginning.
Most music that people enjoy listening to today is built on tertiary harmony—maybe with some added tones, but still recognizably built on thirds.
As you might imagine, there are quite a few rules on how to build chords, and which chords must precede or follow other chords, which is a level of detail we're not going to dive into for this discussion.
Last thing I will mention is to go back to the fifth interval. If I'm in the key of C, using the C scale as the foundation for my harmonies, the fifth tone of the scale is G. Musically, that is referred to as the dominant. It goes back to the psychology/acoustics thing again . . . it is the strongest harmonic to C, the root of the scale. It took on a special place in the minds of the early musicians, hence the dominant name. Likewise, a chord that is built on the fifth of the scale is referred to as the dominant chord in that key. In C, the dominant chord would be G-B-D, maybe with an added seventh or ninth.
Okay, this is going to be way simplified. For a more thorough but still reasonably brief discussion of the issues, see the Acoustics and Temperament articles in the Harvard Dictionary of Music.
This issue has to do with the physics of sound generation. In nature, there is no such thing as a pure tone. All natural tone generating objects, whether animate or inanimate, resonate when they generate tones. They generate complex wave-forms consisting of the primary tone and then the secondary harmonics or partials that are associated with it. The only way I know to get a pure naked tone without harmonics is to use a sine-wave generator, although modern tuning forks come close.
This generation of harmonics is not an issue as long as we are producing monophonic music. However, as soon as we move to polyphonic or homophonic music (more than one note sounding at the same time), we have a problem. (See the musical lexicon section.)
The human ear is capable of discerning some pretty subtle distinctions in tonality. When two different tones are generated, we instinctively want them to be consonant, to sound good, so we want the higher-pitched tone to match into one of the partials of the lower-pitched tone. The closer the match, the more consonant/less dissonant the harmony, the more "perfect" it becomes.
The problem is the proportion of tones one to another to produce "perfect" consonance is not consistent if you change the lower tone. If my lower tone is a C, to achieve perfect consonance with a G the pitch of the G will be slightly different than the pitch of a G will be if it is perfectly consonant with a lower D tone.
This isn't normally a problem for vocalists, obviously. They tend to adjust their sound to blend without even thinking about it. This is also true of good wind musicians. Players speak of "lipping" a tone, of shifting the "embouchure" (position of the mouth in relation to the mouthpiece) to make a subtle difference in the pitch. And of course standard string players can just slide a fingertip a hair one way or another to blend in.
However, for hammered or plucked instruments (bells, glockenspiel, piano, harpsichord, harp, etc.), this is not possible. This means that practically speaking, their "palette" of available tonalities would be limited to one base key with perfect tuning and at most three or four keys closely related to it. As you get farther away from the base key that the tuning of the instrument is perfect for, the less consonant/more dissonant its music would sound within itself. Needless to say, it's rather laborious to retune one of these instruments, if it's possible at all. And the thought of trying to adjust the tuning of a pipe organ can't even be seriously considered.
The limitations of this approach are pretty self-evident. Composers chafed at being limited to a handful of keys/tonalities.
A number of "temperament" systems were proposed over the years with different methods of adjusting pitch ratios and dropping certain keys from usage.
Eventually, however, the system that won out is the "Equal Temperament" system. It had been proposed in one form or another as far back as the early 1500s, but it didn't gain dominant status until about 1800 in Germany and about 1850 in France and Britain. In this system, the only truly perfect interval is the octave—A to A, B to B, etc. Between the two tones of an octave, the frequency spectrum is divided into twelve equal semitones (a/k/a half steps), each of which corresponds to one of the white and black keys of a piano in that octave.
The net result is that the non-octave intervals in equal temperament are never "perfect," but many of them are so close it's hard for even the human ear to detect the difference. The big thing is that all keys/tonalities are just a little bit off, instead of some of them being nearly perfect and some of them being rather dissonant. This opened up the full musical palette for composers, which made for the richness of the classical and romantic periods of music.
This was a very serious subject in musical circles of the 16xx era. Lots of debate (i.e., impassioned arguments) occurred over this.
Of course, even today, you will sometimes hear wind instrumentalists muttering that equal temperament is a folly, and we should go back to the true Pythagorean/just tunings. J
Standard international pitch today is a' (the a above middle c) = 440 Hz. This was established in 1939 by an international conference under the sponsorship of the International Standards Association. (Precursor to ISO?)
Prior to that, the standard was a'=435 Hz, established by the Paris Academy in 1859 and ratified by a conference in Vienna in 1885.
Prior to that, there was no international standard. It was whatever the local musicians decided. Most probably, it was whatever the local pipe organ had been tuned to, as that would be the instrument that would be hardest to re-tune. It was not unknown for composers to have to transpose works if they took them to a different locale because the tuning in their new location was significantly off compared to their old location.
Historical evidence is that in the early 1700s, the closest thing to a standard was b' = to something around 422 Hz. 16xx probably was not too different. This means that the a' would probably have been around 370 Hz. This is a difference on the order of a full step. The down-time a' would be around the up-time g', maybe even lower.
Net effect = down-time musicians playing up-time music with local tuning values would generate music that was actually lower in pitch than the up-time performance of the same piece. This actually gives a break to sopranos, tenors, trumpeters, and anyone else who was performing in their personal upper register. A difference of a step is a huge difference. It would also explain why composers would sometimes produce copies of the same work in multiple keys, as the local organ might have a different pitch than the organ in the last place he was at, so to get the sound he wanted he'd have to change to a different key.
Why was the international move to raise the pitch? One suggestion is that they wanted a brighter sound.
Okay, we've talked about all this to get to this point: the music from the future is going to sound very different to 1632 ears. This is the part that is hardest for our generation to understand. I'm actually going to quote some words I wrote for one of my characters, Marla Linder, in the story "Suite for Four Hands," which was published in Grantville Gazette, volume 5. I can't think of a better way to describe what's what.
" There has always been a difference between the music done for art's sake, and the music done to please the common man. You know that's true. The music you create for patrons, and I include the church in that category, is different from the music you create on street corners and in taverns. It may be related—you know as well as I do that melodies from the street and the taverns have a way of sneaking into even the music written for the churches—but there is a definite difference in complexity between the two. The more complex the music grows, the smaller it seems the audience is who can truly appreciate it.
"As I said, this has pretty much always been the case, but until the early 1900s the music of the streets was more of an undercurrent in the stream of music. That changed with the invention of mechanical devices that could record music played in one place onto some kind of medium, such as wax or types of plastic—" They all nodded at the reference to the magic stuff that was so prevalent in Grantville. "—or even the CDs.
"What happened was once the average citizen could own a device that would play whatever music he wanted whenever he wanted it, he began buying the music he liked. That changed the way music was created and performed. By the 1970s, it was becoming difficult for many orchestras to exist, partly because people were buying different music than what the orchestras played, and partly because even the music the orchestras did play could be recorded, bought and played any time.
"The popular music, the outgrowth of the music of the streets, took many forms. Most people would like a few types. Very few people liked them all. But in almost every case, the popular musicians became like heroes, and it became a status symbol to people to have a lot of these recordings. The more you had, especially of rare or new or avant-garde musicians, the more status you had among your friends. By the time I was in high school, a ridiculously large amount of money was being spent every year by people all across our nation to purchase these recordings.
"The styles of music diverged for a while, but inevitably they began influencing each other again, both between different types of popular music and between the popular music and the art music."
Another conversational quote from the same source.
After they regained their composure, Friedrich said, "How can so many different styles have developed so quickly? Our music develops slowly, changes slowly. Why did theirs change so rapidly?"
"We've already talked about the access to mechanical and electrical systems to play music," Marla said as she walked back into the room. "Another factor, though, is the changes in the place and authority of the church in society. For most of its existence, the church has been a conservative institution. That can be a good thing, at times. However, it can also be a drawback, for conservative organizations tend to be very slow to change. Ultraconservative organizations actively resist change. Hence the boiling pot of Europe that Luther and Calvin have lit a fire under."
She moved to the stereo, and continued speaking while she searched for a CD. "One of the areas where the church exerted its control was in the arts. Musical forms changed very slowly over the years. But as a result of the changes that occurred beginning with Luther, the influence of the church—whether Roman, Lutheran or Reformed—over music began to ebb, and musical evolutions began to cycle faster. By the 1800s, musical generations were occurring on a level with human generations. By my lifetime, musical generations were occurring every five to ten years."
There you see the evolution of modern music described in a nutshell. Now to talk about what the down-timers would hear.
There are three factors that define what sounds "good" to people: using notes that fall within the harmonic series of the previous note, using notes that fit within the harmonic series of the chord in place at that moment of the music, or using notes and intervals that are acceptable within the cultural experience of the people. The first two do have some grounding in acoustics. The last is purely a factor of what the people have learned to be acceptable, and please do not underestimate it.
Singable melody carries with it implied harmony, created by the intervals between the notes of the melody line. Even if all you ever heard sung was the melody line, if you can hear the melody well enough to pitch-match and sing along with it, you gain a feeling for the key the song is in. It's an unconscious thing—most people don't even realize that it's happening. And in the street music of the 1632 era, changes of key during a song just weren't common, whether sung, played on a pennywhistle or played on a bagpipe. I won't say they didn't occur, but they weren't common.
As an example of something that would really affect the down-timers, let's look at the old standby, "Do, a Deer," from The Sound of Music. Even performed with only the melody, I think that song would drive most of the down-timers nuts. It seems so simple to us, but we grew up with it in the twentieth century. If you really listen to the melody, though, that song seems to shift keys about five or six times in the verse and chorus, and then it starts over and does it again. You don't have to be a trained musician to hear that, and it would just sound "weird" to them.
As another example, take the song "Maria" from the Broadway musical West Side Story, music by Leonard Bernstein . Down-timers would hate this song because of an interval in the melody that would never be used in melody writing at that time in either street or art music. The interval is an augmented fourth, basically from C to F#, also called a diminished fifth or a tri-tone. That is the single most dissonant interval in Western European music using what we would think of as normal instruments and scales. Nobody then would use it in melody writing. In fact, supposedly Bernstein intentionally used the interval just to prove that it could be used in a melody. It definitely caused a certain amount of furor in academia when he did.
Any down-timer who heard "Maria" would cringe. The professional musicians could tell you why–they actually referred to that interval as "diabolus in musica." The common people would just know that the song really sounded bad. And yet, by our standards, that's a pretty song. That's probably the most extreme example I can present, but it's not the only case.
Relatively minor changes in style can produce severe reactions in the public. Remember how Bob Dylan's career almost tanked when he picked up an electric guitar? In the same way, relatively small differences in the "sound" of up-time music would cause acceptance of it to be somewhat less than universal or fast.
Another issue would be syncopation, the playing of notes on the off-beat. Some of the art music of the time used syncopation, but it was narrowly defined to a certain style of syncopation, not the full gamut of syncopation used today.
The street music of 1632 is very simple. The up-time music that would come closest to matching it would be simple folk music (not the sophisticated Peter, Paul and Mary stuff), early country/hillbilly music not far removed from the Appalachian hill country folk songs, and hymns written before about 1920. There will be exceptions—the melodies of the Beatles songs "Michelle" and "Yesterday" would translate well, although the original harmonies might not.
A lot of music will make an easy transition. I intentionally picked Irish folk music for some of my characters to perform in the taverns for several reasons, one of which was that the people would accept it quickly. But a lot of songs that seem plain vanilla to us (cultural experience) are really going to sound weird to the down-timers, and it will take some time for them to become accepted. There is such a thing as cultural inertia. For some of the songs it may just be a matter of a year or so. Some of them will be years, some a generation or more. Dixieland, ragtime, jazz, heavy metal—anything with lots of dissonance in it is going to be on the long end of the scale. There might be an occasional exceptional character that stands out early on as liking one or more of those styles, but wide-spread acceptance will take a while.
The art music of 1632 is pre-Johann Sebastian Bach. This is a full generation before he was even born. It's pretty simple, comparatively speaking. Bach and Handel will seem avant-garde to them. Mozart and Beethoven will blow their doors off. Chopin will cause harpsichord players to freak out. Most everything written above applies to the art music, and more so.
One more quote, and then we'll move on. This is a 1958 quote from Igor Stravinsky, one of the most well known composers of the twentieth century.
"I am often asked if I would consent to conduct in the Soviet Union. For purely musical reasons I could not. Their orchestras do not perform the music of the three Viennese and myself, and they would be, I am sure, unable to cope with the simplest problems of rhythmic execution that we introduced to music fifty years ago. The style of my music would also be alien to them. These difficulties are not to be overcome in a few rehearsals; they require a twenty- or thirty-year tradition. I discovered something of the same situation in Germany at the end of the war. After so many years of Hitler in which my L'Histoire du Soldat, Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire, Berg's and Webern's music were banned, the musicians were unable for a long time to play the new music, though they have certainly more than made up for it since." (From Conversations with Igor Stravinsky, by Igor Stravinsky and Robert Plant, © 1958, 1959, University of California Press)
I will grant you that Stravinsky's music would be challenging to any musician, but the point he makes relates to and underlines what I've been saying above. Much of the up-time music will not be assimilated easily or quickly.
Some time back three members of the editorial board were polled to ask them to rate several modern pieces of music as to how they think they would be accepted by the down-timers in the year 1632. The scale was 1 = that's just noise to 10 = I like that. Below are the consolidated scores. It's a subjective analysis, but that in itself tends to prove the point that a lot of acceptability is in the ear of the hearer.
Edelweiss (from The Sound of Music) 9.5
Shady Grove 8.5
Blow the Man Down 8.0
The Gambler 7.5
The Rising of the Moon 7.5
Throw Mama from the Train (a kiss, a kiss) 7.5
Streets of Laredo 7.0
Boll Weevil 7.0
Long Black Veil 7.0
Swanee River 6.5
Bach's G minor Fugue 6.5
Amazing Grace (standard hymnal version) 6.5
Will the Circle Be Unbroken 6.5
Battle Hymn of the Republic 6.0
Give My Regards to Broadway 6.0
The theme song from The Brady Bunch 6.0
Hello, Dolly 5.5
All the Girls I've Loved Before 5.5
I Saw the Light 5.5
White Christmas 5.5
Blowing in the Wind 5.0
Some of the Mozart concerti? 5.0
16 Going on 17 (from The Sound of Music) 4.0
California Girls 4.0
Up a Lazy River 4.0
Alexander's Ragtime Band 3.5
Dixie 3.0
Putting on the Ritz 3.0
Goodbye Norma Jean 3.0
Hotel California 3.0
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun 2.5
It Don't Mean a Thing if It Ain't Got That Swing 2.5
Rock Around the Clock 2.0
A Day in the Life 2.0
Blue Suede Shoes 2.0
Benny and the Jets 1.5
Maple Leaf Rag 1.5
Purple Rain 1.5
Maria (from West Side Story) 1.0
Monophony—music characterized by a single melodic "voice" with no harmony. Best example is Gregorian chant.
Polyphony—music characterized by multiple melodic "voices," the interweaving of which creates vertical harmonic structures. Most Renaissance and Baroque era music is polyphonic. Most anything by J. S. Bach would serve as a good example, but I would point to the fugue section of the "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" as being one of the easiest to find and recognize.
Homophony—music typically characterized by a single melodic "voice" supported by other "voices" which may parallel the melodic voice or may move contrary to it, but still interact with it to produce vertical harmony. Most music produced since the beginning of the Classical era is homophonic: Mozart, Beethoven, Rodgers & Hammerstein, etc. Simple examples can be found in standard church hymnals.
Symphony—as with most words ending in -phony, it's derived from Greek. The original form of the word meant an octave, and was later broadened to mean consonance. It's had various other applications over the centuries, but since the classical period began in the eighteenth century, it usually means a work for orchestra written in a particular form called a sonata form. Secondarily, it has also been applied as an adjective to the orchestra itself, as well as various other forms of music written for orchestra—i.e., symphonic poem, etc.
Adagio—a musical term with at least two different meanings:
1) a relatively slow tempo
2) a piece written to be played in the adagio tempo. A very well known and extraordinarily beautiful example is Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, which was used in the soundtrack of the movie Platoon.
Tempo (plural is tempi)—the speed at which a piece of music is performed.
Ritard (yes, it's spelled correctly)—musical direction that basically means slow down
Accelerando—musical direction that basically means speed up
Crescendo—musical direction that means get louder
Diminuendo—musical direction that means get softer/quieter
Forte—loud
Fortissimo—very loud
Piano—a musical term with at least two different meanings:
1) the instrument
2) soft/quiet
Pianissimo—very soft/quiet
Embouchure—the correct formation of the mouth and placement of the lips in relationship to the mouthpiece of a wind instrument.
Timbre (yes, that's how it's spelled, r before e)—a French word correctly pronounced something like "tahm-bruh"—it basically means the characteristics of the sound of a voice or instrument. The timbre of a piano is different from the timbre of a trumpet. The various stops and pipes of an organ produce tones of different timbres. The timbre of a soprano is different from the timbre of an alto.
A History of Western Music, Donald Jay Grout, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 1960
(Current edition is the seventh)
A Short History of Opera, Second Edition, Donald Jay Grout, Columbia University Press, 1965
Harvard Dictionary of Music, Second Edition, Willi Apel, editor, Belknap Press, 1969
(Current edition is The Harvard Dictionary of Music: Fourth Edition (Harvard University Press Reference Library) by Don Michael Randel (Editor))
A History of Musical Style, Richard L. Crocker, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1966
The Encyclopedia of Music, Max Wade-Matthews and Wendy Thompson, Hermes House, 2003
Oxford Dictionary of Music, Second Edition, Michael Kennedy
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, by Stanley Sadie (Editor)
The Guitar from the Renaissance to the Present Day, Harvey Turnbull, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1974.
(Not easy to find, but supposedly this is the standard book on the history of the guitar.)
http://plato.acadiau.ca/courses/musi/callon/2233/2233.HTM
http://www.geocities.com/papandrew/outlines/grout09.html
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~leonid/violin_strings.htm