This post offers a broad view of humanity's musical customs. It explores the evidence for prehistoric music making, and it explains how music got passed down through the ages. The world's musical traditions are also explored, as are the earliest efforts to notate music.
This blog post covers the famous medieval composer and religious mystic known as Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179). Her strange musical creativity is explored as is the likely source of that creativity—migrainous hallucinations. Her most important work, Scivias, which is the source of her chant called Ordo virtutum, is analyzed and explained.
This blog post explores Gregorian chant and the psalms and hymns that comprise the Roman liturgy. It also describes variants of chant that evolved later in the tradition's history like tropes, sequences, and liturgical dramas.
This blog post describes the fall of the Roman Empire and the music that emerged as a consequence of that fall. It analyzes the musical habits of early Christians, and it inspects the early stages of Gregorian chant. Political and societal influences are considered for context and scope.
Chasing the Chords 