how far was music set back by the church?

i had never heard this before but i wanted to share. i just started reading a book called 'this is your brain on music'... so far its awesome.
if youre into music and/or science then i suggest you take a look.
anyway, do you think musical progression was slowed down because of the church? i ask this because of a paragraph i read in this book. i had never heard this before and i cant stop thinking about it.....
here it is

"the catholic church banned music that contained polyphony(more than one musical part playing at a time), fearing that it would cause peole to doubt the unity of god. the church also banned the musical interval of an augmented fourth, the distance between c and f-sharp. this interval was considered so dissonant that it must have been the work of lucifer, and so the church named it 'diabolus in musica"

i just cant get over it. i cant help but wonder how music would have been or how it would have progressed had it not been for the church.

what do you think?.

I believe it. The false church which is the center of what it claims to stand against has held this planet back for centuries in nearly every aspect of its being. I don't think God would want to hold humans back, he'd want them to flourish and live happily, not be oppressed and divided like the false church.

originally posted by: Yeahkeepwatchingme
I believe it. The false church which is the center of what it claims to stand against has held this planet back for centuries in nearly every aspect of its being. I don't think God would want to hold humans back, he'd want them to flourish and live happily, not be oppressed and divided like the false church.

i feel really stupid for not knowing about this and it bothers me. generally speaking i consider myself pretty intelligent.
of course i have heard about the church holding back the sciences. i have read about the church branding(and killing) scientists as heretics. i guess i just never really thought about it in depth.
so church says, "no metal"... i guess i could believe that even though i dont agree with it. thinking about the church banning an interval though is just blowing my mind.

Also, the early Catholic Church's actual banning of the use of Polyphony for so many centuries during the Dark Ages & medieval period, sadly served to reinforce this banal, blanket assumption & viewpoint, that any "respectable" music from antiquity must also have been monophonic!

This resulting predominance of the miserable monophony of the Dark Ages & medieval period in the West, which lasted for so many centuries, may have led to a general misguided viewpoint in the West, that monophony must also have predominated throughout the rest of the ancient world as well - and thus, the "urban myth" of the monotony of monophony; a frankly ridiculous, virtually unchallenged, unquestioned dismal dogma, was born...and has remained in Western thought, right through to the present day!

THE "URBAN MYTH" OF THE MONOTONY OF MONOPHONY IN THE ANCIENT WORLD?

Hey, what a coinkidink... I just started reading the same book.

I haven't gotten to that chapter yet, and my ADD is already kicking in... maybe I should hold out a bit further, eh?

I knew of the Tritone (diminished 5th or Devil's Chord), but I didn't know about the multiple melody stuff... thanks for sharing, now I'm gonna continue reading that book with interest....

... untill my ADD kicks in again!

a reply to: CardiffGiant

All I can say is that music is not relegated entirely to the western world. Thus music in the eastern world was not held back by any religious restrictions. Therefore to contemplate the "set back" is entirely skewed in a western way.

While I do think that certain beliefs made the evolution of music a bit more difficult, I can't believe that the setbacks were permanent.

So much was stunted by the church. Science many were killed because of theories. That the church did not like. Medicine and science many were killed as witches. For 100's of years they propagated their beliefs and executed those that differed. Makes me sick to think where we could be now. If it was only allowed in your home or church we would not have had those problems then and today.

originally posted by: kelbtalfenek
a reply to: CardiffGiant

All I can say is that music is not relegated entirely to the western world. Thus music in the eastern world was not held back by any religious restrictions. Therefore to contemplate the "set back" is entirely skewed in a western way.

While I do think that certain beliefs made the evolution of music a bit more difficult, I can't believe that the setbacks were permanent.

i get it but i live in the western world and when most people say 'music' in general discussion, they mean western music(which includes classical)

originally posted by: the_philth
Hey, what a coinkidink... I just started reading the same book.

I haven't gotten to that chapter yet, and my ADD is already kicking in... maybe I should hold out a bit further, eh?

I knew of the Tritone (diminished 5th or Devil's Chord), but I didn't know about the multiple melody stuff... thanks for sharing, now I'm gonna continue reading that book with interest....

... untill my ADD kicks in again!

keep reading.
im not that far into it. just started reading it today and i love it.

a reply to: CardiffGiant
The Church commissioned works. I think TPTB today are far worse, pushing JayZ and Timberdork, made to block the airwaves of something with a subversive nature.

That's the church for you,and the least stable note in the major scale is a natural 4th!

You rest on that over a major chord and it sounds terrible

Lydian mode far sounds far better

a reply to: CardiffGiant

Hello again....as a lifelong guitarist, keyboardist, songwriter and guitar instructor....I dont think music was stifled. There was no wide distribution of music to the general public, villages, towns and cities. It was not like it was today.

I dont think at any given time in history, anyone say... in some small village in the Alps or on the island of Fiji was stopped or even influenced by any great enforcement of "music-police" by the churches, or anyone else for that matter.

If you'd like to compare historical musical creation and expansion....look into the diverse music created after the Christian beginnings, the Crusader days, the Medevil days, minstrel compostions and hymns.

There are happy and light sounding music in Major keys, and sad hymns in minor keys. The keys....and arrangement of notes in those chords....just based on triad structure...run the gamut of emotions.

And there have always....always... been the same notes in music. Never restricted for compositions...nor performances. Originality gave us the traditional, joyous and sad hymns for churches and minstrels traveling the world.

You will find a lot of diversity in all keys, moods...and modes...without restricted composition...in over 2,000 yrs.

a reply to: CardiffGiant

It will be difficult to demonstrate how music has suffered taking into account of the old masters versus music from the modern age. I'm not a fan of the old masters or of modern music but if I were to pass judgment on the two, I would vote for the old masters and wonder if the newer forms of music are not from Lucifer--and I'm not religious, really.

a reply to: CardiffGiant

I doubt it, music is, and for me, will always be one of the most amazing things on this planet, I listen to everything from punk rock, metal, right through to jazz and classical. It may all sound different, but it is ALL based on the exact same principals.

Furthermore, I believe that there's always been people (musicians and lovers of music) who have seen through the bullsh*t of religion (even at it's most harshest, brutal and extreme propaganda pushing periods of history) and defied what they were told or threatened with.

You always feel good music, even if you're told it's bad (for you).

EDIT: Music is similar to science in a way, some scientists were burned alive or worse for doing/saying the things they did/believed in, and music is probably just a strong a force hence it probably had similar followers.

a reply to: CardiffGiant
This is a complete misconception. A month ago I just finished reading a music history book by Helen Kaufmann that goes through the whole progression of the church to her modern times.

I wish to quote large swathes of it but I dont have the time... maybe I can photograph pages later. But it started with Gregorian chant and evolved into polyphony over a long process... everything in musical development was a long process. The church though enjoyed music and saw it as a great tool, both in creating and reinforcing faith, and there is a great quote from a Greek priest in 370ad about how "it is the healing ointment for the wounds suffered in the battle of life".

The church has always encouraged music from the beginning, but the later medieval church simply discouraged or banned certain themes in music, of course.

No, the Roman Catholic Church didn't put music 'back'. It was a powerful force supporting musical innovation. The introduction of polyphony and intervals like thirds to the formal Western musical tradition began in the Church. The importance of harmony in Westerm music can be traced directly to Church music.

In mediaeval times, anyone in Europe who was serious about music-making had two career options: become a strolling player hustling for farthings and kisses in the market square and hoping the local lord (ie top thug) would take a shine to you and make you part of his domestic retinue, or become a monk and spend the rest of your life in shelter and relative comfort, with time, encouragement and support for your music-making. Without the Church, Western music would be immeasurably poorer than it is today.

*

Besides, music isn't science or public sanitation. There's really no such thing as 'progress' in music. Modern music isn't somehow better or worse than ancient music. All music speaks to the culture in which it is created, and has sufficient beauty and depth of meaning for people in that culture, even if it sounds like nails on a blackboard to the people who live across the river.

Western culture is innovative and assimilative. Western music shares those traits. Our ears are today accustomed to tolerating and even appreciating intervals our forebears would have regarded as dissonant, tones they would have regarded as ugly noise, and rhythmic patterns they would have regarded as oppressive or chaotic, because of this magpie quality that Western music has (and shares with the rest of Western culture).

The adoption of various intervals in Western polyphony began with Gregorian chant in the Middle Ages and continued through twelve-tone serialism, which arrived at the end of the nineteenth century, in which every note of the equal-temparament scale and every interval between notes is accorded the same importance. And it didn't even end there, as Western musicians in the twentieth century began making use of microtones, bent notes and glissandi adopted from non-Western musical forms and folk musicians (who always did that kind of thing to some extent, even in the West).

But none of this is 'progress', except in the sense that 'progress' means 'movement'. Yes, the nature of what is judged musically acceptable changes. But it doesn't change for the better or the worse, except in somebody's personal opinion.

a reply to: Whereismypassword

That's the church for you,and the least stable note in the major scale is a natural 4th!

You rest on that over a major chord and it sounds terrible.

A fourth creates harmonic movement away from the tonic.

If you rest a fourth over a major tonic chord you will get a semitone interval between the major third note and the fourth. So obviously, you don't rest on it. But you can play it as a suspension resolving to the major third, which creates a sense of urgent, aggressive movement. The opening bars of the Rolling Stones' 'Brown Sugar' and 'Start Me Up' both exploit this third/fourth tension and release, as do numerous other riffs by the Stones and other rock bands.

Lydian mode far sounds far better

I think you're making an error when you judge intervals as 'better' or 'worse' depending on their consonance or dissonance. Music is all about tension and release, and the movement between (relative) dissonance and consonance is exactly how harmony works. It is why even a non-musician instinctively knows what the keynote of a piece of music is: it's the note on which the melody ends, the root note of the chord to which the harmony resolves. It isn't better; it's just where the journey ends.

Never listen to people who judge music based on some kind of theory. Music theory doesn't underlie music; it's not the foundation from which music is built up. It is an analytical tool designed to describe that which already exists — the music itself. Music is complete and sufficient in and of itself; music theory can do nothing to improve it.