In antiquity the Sumerians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans evolved the first aesthetic theories and musical systems relevant to the music of the modern Western world. Unfortunately, few actual musical examples survive because of early notational practices and the gradual erosion of oral traditions. What is known is derived from the writings of the period and iconography—depictions of performing musicians, instruments, and musical events in sculpture and in wall and vase paintings.

In the Middle Ages traditions of musical performance were kept alive by the church and in the music sung and played by wandering minstrels.

In the Renaissance, polyphony (combining several simultaneous voice parts) and the early precursors of modern tonality (organization of music around a focal tone) were developed. The smooth flow of Renaissance liturgical counterpoint (polyphony) and the perky rhythms of secular Renaissance dance music remained as models of taste and musical technique even into the 21st century.

The performer emerged as a central figure in the focus of musical attention and purpose during the Baroque period. The heightening of the role of the individual performing artist and the invention of increasingly dramatic gestures to demonstrate performers’ skills combined with a steady refinement in the construction of musical instruments. The reduction of musical materials to two modes (scale and melody patterns), in this case the major and minor scales, and the initial efforts to compose with large musical forms (opera, oratorio, sonata, and concerto) took place in this period. It is notable that in the Baroque era the equal-temperament system for tuning the strings or pipes of keyboard instruments evolved—a development that has had profound effect on the nature of musical language.

In the Rococo or Classical period that followed, the elaborate contrapuntal texture of Baroque music gave way to music of subtle dynamic differentiation, often based on simple folk materials (rhythms and melodies). The relationships between tonal materials and large musical forms achieved their highest state in the sonata and in opera.

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The Romantic age was a period of refinement and intensification of Rococo principles with heavy literary overtones. It was the true age of the star virtuoso; that is, the age in which the role, person, and effect of the virtuoso was most dramatized and glamourized. The symphony orchestra in this period achieved its maximum development. Italian opera under Giuseppe Verdi found its noblest expression and German opera with Richard Wagner expanded into the Gesamtkunstwerk (“complete art work”).

Modern music dates from an era beginning roughly around World War I. Concert life, however, has remained more or less what the 19th century established; the virtuoso conductor and performer dominate the musical establishment. By contrast, an ever-broadening spectrum of performance techniques and styles has been employed by small combos—jazz, rock, improvisational, experimental, live electronic, and multimedia—that have sprung up since the mid-20th century.

Antiquity

The civilizations of antiquity expanded the role assigned to music in earlier cultures. The Sumerians established the foundations for the tradition of liturgical music. Some of the prayers that they sang have survived. From various artifacts of this civilization something is known about Sumerian musical instruments and some of the situations in which music was played. Such instruments as lyres, harps, sistra, pipes, timbrels, and various drums figured importantly. Particular instruments were identified as accompaniment with specific types of religious poetry, and indeed the development of different poetic genres seems to have been considerably influenced by the nature of these instruments. While its primary purpose was religious, music also had something of a secular role in Sumerian culture and was played in processions, at banquets, and during sporting events. Music as a profession first developed in Sumerian culture. Both men and women participated as singers and instrumentalists and held priestlike positions with specific functions and ranks of authority.

The musical culture of ancient Egypt, which apparently emerged from the same sources as Sumer, resembles that earlier culture in many aspects: the close relationship between music and religion, the presence of a musical profession, some secular musical activity, and similar musical instruments. Of special interest in Egyptian music is the development of chironomy, the use of hand signals to indicate to instrumentalists what they should play. The singer in this manner guided instrumentalists through melodies with which the singer was seemingly more familiar than the players.

In these ancient cultures there was no notational system or codified theory of musical practice. Different musical traditions were exchanged in the process of trade, migration, military conquest, and intermarriage to form that common body of practices that is the basis of Western music.

Of the early civilizations, Greece provided the musical culture of greatest significance for the development of Western music. The system of scales and modes, as well as a large part of the general philosophy concerning the nature and effect of musical sounds, has been inherited from the Greeks. It was also the Greeks who developed the theory of ethos, which defines the character of psychological and emotional response to different musical stimuli. Building on the ancient religions and magical accoutrements of music, the Greeks assigned specific mental and emotional states to specific pitch arrangements and instrumental combinations. Music infused with this motivating power stood at the centre of the social order.

Though a major part of Western musical terminology, basic music theory and philosophy, basic notational practices, and the foundations of acoustical physics derive from the ancient Greeks, very little of their music has survived. The great ethical significance of music in Greek society caused performing mastery to be an essential aspect of education. Everyone was taught to sing and to play instruments. For a major part of the period all music was a setting of words with instrumental accompaniment, for the most part doubling the voice at the interval of octaves, fourths, or fifths. It was only in the later part of the period, after the age of Pericles (late 5th century bce), that instruments began to be played independently of singers.

Music, in the later stages of the Hellenic period, became an increasingly important part of public spectacles. As musical performance became increasingly secularized and became the property of the masses, the upper classes withdrew to esoteric considerations of the art and reflections on its past. It was perhaps at this point that music was divided into two fairly artificial categories: the contemplation of music’s nature and history and practical musical performance.

Assuming the artistic mantle of ancient Greece, the Romans disseminated Greek music throughout the known world. The essential role of music in the Roman Empire remained unchanged. Rome’s principal contribution consisted in serving as a catalyst for the mixing of Hebraic and Hellenic traditions of musical performance, which, preserved by the Christian Church for a thousand years, emerged again in the Renaissance into the first flowering of modern musical practices in the West.

Although not in the mainstream of Western musical performance, Islamic (North African and Middle Eastern) classical music closely approaches the orchestral tradition of European music in one respect: large choruses and orchestras—consisting of tambourines, pot drums, recorder-flutes, ʿūds (plucked lutes), bowed lutes, and dulcimers—are assembled to perform “suites” consisting of a series of instrumental solos and orchestral selections interspersed with unison choral songs or solo recitatives based on classical poetry. But while these suites are perfectly suited to performance in formal concert halls, they may also be heard in much less regulated settings, such as cafés. Here the listener is free either to concentrate intellectually on the progress and development of the musical ideas or to converse and eat, relaxing in the beauty of the general musical design. The more “oriental” side of Islamic musical performance is more improvisatory, either in solo performance on a recorder-flute, fiddle, ʿūd, or dulcimer or by any of these in combination with the voice—the instrumentalist then elaborating on the singer’s improvisation. Here, too, the relationship of audience to performer is much less formal than in the performance of European music.