Progarchives.com has always (since 2002) relied on banners ads to cover web hosting fees and all. Please consider supporting us by giving monthly PayPal donations and help keep PA fast-loading and ad-free forever.
Joined: August 27 2014
Location: riding the MOAB
Status: Offline
Points: 1505
Posted: September 14 2016 at 13:34
England is of course the cradle of Prog. That combined with England's...colorful medieval culture and history, it's bound for that time's music to leak into something as eclectic as progressive rock.
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout
Joined: May 13 2007
Location: Europe
Status: Offline
Points: 37575
Posted: September 15 2016 at 06:52
Let's recap a little:
When we talk of the Medieval we are referring to period of history between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance. This is a period that ended 500 years ago sometime around 1500CE.
What followed was called the Renaissance - this is defined as "the revival of European art and literature under the influence of classical models in the 14th–16th centuries." ... it's called a "revival" because it was an attempt to revive stuff that existed before the Middle Ages even though the people back then had very little evidence of what Classical Rome and Greece where like 1000 years earlier. Just like now, all they had was a few ruins and a handful of myths, so they re-invented what they thought it was like. Basically the Renaissance was a whole load of new made-up stuff that people thought that ancient Greeks and Romans would have made.
Similarly, by the 19th century (which was merely 200 years ago) very little was known of the Medieval period so it was known as "The Dark Ages" as very little evidence of that time survived (for one reason or another) and we were "in the dark" about it. Therefore just 300 years after the Medieval period people knew sod-all about it so they too invented a whole load of made-up stuff that they imagined it was like. Legends and myths were presented as historical fact (King Arthur and Robin Hood for example) and because nostalgia is generally a positive thing, they romanticised it quite a bit. Modern Medieval Festivals/Fayres/Fetes/Pageants (as featured in The Simpsons and The Big-Bang Theory tv programmes) owe everything to this 19th century romanticism. And like-wise, that di-do-dol-dilly-lilly do and hey-nonny-no musical stuff that appears in Hollywood Medieval movies isn't Medieval at all but made-up music of what they thought it should have sounded like back then.
No one knows what really knows what secular Medieval music sounded like. Obviously there are no sound recordings from the Dark Ages and most musicians passed on music "by ear" rather than by written manuscript, especially non-secular and folk music but also religious music. Most of the written manuscripts that have survived are of religious music, not secular and all of it from the middle and late Medieval (i.e. the last 300 years or so of that 1000 year period). Also the music notation used back then was not as informative as modern notation so were more a memory aide to "by ear" learning than a means of documenting and preserving tunes and music. However, all this knowledge, and the interpretation of it, is relatively new, it certainly wasn't that well known in the 1970s and played no part in the so-called "Medieval Folk" revival of the late 60s/early 70s.
We have a good idea of what the instruments looked like and can reconstruct many of them (crumhorn, serpent, sackbut etc.) but we can only make educated guesses of the music they made with them based upon what the religious music (madrigals etc) sounded like...
Most of what we commonly recognise as Medieval sounding is more often Renaissance or Elizabethan in origin, and that goes for Amazing Blondel, Spirogyra, Third Ear Band, Quintessence, Jethro Tull, Gentle Giant and even Gryphon (to some extent - case in point there being anything they played on Medieval instruments sounds like Medieval to us even when it isn't). Are these bands (and their Progressive Rock music) influenced by the Medieval? and the only answer to that is: no, not directly - at best you could argue they were influenced by the idea of Medieval, and Minstrel In The Gallery is a good illustration of that, it invokes a feeling that it should be influenced by Medieval music and culture but it's really faux-medieval.
Also, can we dispel this pervading myth that Merrie England is some romantic bucolic idyl of warm beer and hog-roasts surrounded by buildings of Medieval and Elizabethan charm where we all sit around drinking tea while watching bloody cricket. We've had an industrial revolution, won and lost an empire and been at war with practically every nation on the planet in the past 300 years - very little of Tudor England and four-fifths of sod all of anything from before then remains, and most of that is either falling down or in ruins.
Nice discussion on Robin Hood's favourite sounds. Gentlemen, consider yourself saluted. Dean you should be a teacher. Even when you talk about stuff I already know you still manage to entice me. Also Gryphon do sound like the middle ages. Why? Robin wore GREEN short shorts.
“The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”
Joined: September 16 2016
Location: NYC
Status: Offline
Points: 2
Posted: September 16 2016 at 09:34
that may be cuz what u shared a link to is abit more, i dont know how to put this, overtly midevial? not saying its worse. but i feel like prog is drawing on endless other genres (duh) and among those are midevial/mystical/fantasy/jazz/classical/awesome influences but its always eclectic. Bands that get really focused on one subgenre usually end up being considred in thier own stand alone subgenre (think van der greaaf generator and jazz rock) and that was a dope song u posted but its very focused one one aspect of what cud be midevial prog.
Joined: January 04 2007
Location: Grok City
Status: Offline
Points: 16163
Posted: September 16 2016 at 09:35
Dean wrote:
...
One way of looking at "why England?" (and not to be too parochial here - this is one of the rare occasions where I do believe it is English rather than British - English musicians absorbed Scottish, Irish and Welsh traditional music as their own) is not that English musicians took American Rock'n'Roll and added other forms of music to it, but like the Italians and Germans did with their takes on "Prog Rock", they adapted it to fit the "local" music they were familiar with. For example trad English Folk wasn't added to Rock'n'Roll and Rock bands didn't "go folk", it was Folk that rocked up and Folk bands went "electric".
...
Very nice, and I would suggest quite historically correct.
I would even go so far as to suggest that the English/British, were also less influenced by the Roman Catholic religion and thus able to maintain some cultural traits alive because of it, in many of what we call today "the arts". In the rest of Europe, a lot of these were wiped away, in favor of the work that the RCC demanded, and tried to make sure you believed in. That seems to be the romantic ideal, as would be suggested by Dean's assessment, and I agree with it.
However, many of these are still alive in Europe, however, they are "minor/small" in relation to anything that we discuss. I was just listening to Macedonian music, and it would be considered "medieval", by the same way we are discussing things here, but no one knows those musicians, or listens to them to validate the work that was wiped away by wars and religion. It might even be older than that and have connections to an even older relation going back to the Greeks and Meravinglians, or something else.
And then later ... we say ... influenced by ... yeah ... the idea of is a much better/easier way of saying it.
Ohhh, goshdang it ... we just ripped "progressive" apart!
Edited by moshkito - September 16 2016 at 09:48
Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told! www.pedrosena.com
Joined: February 01 2011
Location: Michigan
Status: Offline
Points: 12695
Posted: September 16 2016 at 22:00
tamijo wrote:
"no, not directly - at best you could argue they were influenced by the idea of Medieval"
This - it is all in your mind.
Minstrel In The Gallery is a rock album, based mostly on black music (drum's) and El-guitar (very 1900's)
nothing medival in there. Even the melody is very much 1900's.
I would disagree on at least one song, "Cold Wind to Valhalla". Ian Anderson's lyrical wordplay is based on kennings, compound descriptive expressions that replace single nouns or verbs, and arefound throughout Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse poetry.
Speaking of Tull, here's something from circa 1513 AD...
...a vigorous circular motion hitherto unknown to the people of this area, but destined to take the place of the mud shark in your mythology...
Joined: May 23 2013
Location: UK
Status: Offline
Points: 2826
Posted: September 18 2016 at 09:17
To quote Moshkito
"I would even go so far as to suggest that the English/British, were also less influenced by the Roman Catholic religion and thus able to maintain some cultural traits alive because of it....." (snip)
Mosh, it would be quite nice if you actually read up on some English history. We had a small but highly influential Catholic prescence in the UK - in the 16th century, one of our kings suppressed the power of the Church and in the 17th, we had a civil war based around the accession to the throne of another king who happened to be Catholic.
Neither of these two events occured in the "medieval" era in the UK. Trust me. I have a History degree and I live here.
To suggest that "medieval" music was anything to do with a specific religion is about at the standard of your normal posts. If you don't know, please stop giving us a best guess, eh ?
Edited by Davesax1965 - September 18 2016 at 09:18
Joined: May 23 2013
Location: UK
Status: Offline
Points: 2826
Posted: September 18 2016 at 09:23
Back to the OP.
Was the "medieval period" specific to England ? Nope. Do we know what "medieval music" sounded like ? Nope. Could a French prog rock band be influenced by "medieval England" ? Yep. And also French medieval music and imagery, of course. Wonder which is more likely ?
Bit of a stupid question, then.
Let's expand on that. I have a lot of Eastern and Moroccan influences in my music. I'll just check. Oh. No turban. No curly slippers. What a surprise. "Perhaps it was down to me being English and England having an Empire and lots of curry restaurants".
Or perhaps..... not.
The fact is that a lot of Prog bands were English. Psychedelia before that had included an element of whimsy and a hearkening back to childhood. Some prog artists picked up on the imagery of the medieval period, the rest followed suit. Being English, what were they expected to most likely play ? Turkish polyrhythms ? Non English bands tended to copy the styles they heard. As always happens with a "new" genre. Simple as that.
Edited by Davesax1965 - September 18 2016 at 09:46
Joined: February 01 2011
Location: Michigan
Status: Offline
Points: 12695
Posted: September 18 2016 at 09:34
Davesax1965 wrote:
To quote Moshkito
"I would even go so far as to suggest that the English/British, were also less influenced by the Roman Catholic religion and thus able to maintain some cultural traits alive because of it....." (snip)
Mosh, it would be quite nice if you actually read up on some English history. We had a small but highly influential Catholic prescence in the UK - in the 16th century, one of our kings suppressed the power of the Church and in the 17th, we had a civil war based around the accession to the throne of another king who happened to be Catholic.
Neither of these two events occured in the "medieval" era in the UK. Trust me. I have a History degree and I live here.
To suggest that "medieval" music was anything to do with a specific religion is about at the standard of your normal posts. If you don't know, please stop giving us a best guess, eh ?
Humorously enough, when I offered Tull's "King Henry's Madrigal" (first appearing in print in 1513 - whereas the arbitrary date set by many historians for the end of the Medieval Epoch ended only 20 years previous in 1492), the song itself is a version of Henry VIII's "Pastime With Good Company" which Henry Tudor wrote while he was still a staunch Catholic and was eventually accorded the title Defender of the Faith by the pope for his treatise Assertio Septem Sancramentorum in defense of the Catholic dogma of the Seven Sacraments. It was written as an attack against...Martin Luther.
So much for Mosh's anti-Catholic rhetoric.
...a vigorous circular motion hitherto unknown to the people of this area, but destined to take the place of the mud shark in your mythology...
1485 - "early modern period". At least it was when I was at University. (Not that I was at Uni in 1485, of course. ;-) )
Martin Luther - 10th Nov 1483 to 18th Feb 1546. Luther is definitely one of the fathers of the Enlightenment, although that doesn't kick in for quite some time afterwards. His ideas are ahead of his time, but definitely not medieval.
Henry VIII we all know about. King from 1509 to 1547. He is not generally seen as being a medieval ruler. Yep, Henry Tudor was a staunch Catholic. He reigns from the start of the early modern period.
So Catholicism was there in England prior to 1483. Mosh is saying that medieval England is nothing to do with Catholicism, if I've read his post correctly. Actually, there was a minority Catholic element to English society which was very well connected. Anti Catholicism really comes in with Henry VIII. If you're claiming the medieval period ends in 1492 (I'd prefer 1485, really) then you're talking about a period where the Catholic church in England exerts power and influence which is only later broken by Henry VIII.
What Mosh is confusing, and Dean has pointed out, is that we don't really have much music from the "medieval" period in England. We do have music from later periods, which may sound "medieval" to Mosh, but actually come from later periods in music.
England seperated from the Catholic Church of Rome in 1534. The dissolution of the monasteries began in 1536. Neither of those are in the "medieval period". We actually had an English Pope in Rome in the 12th century. Now, that's medieval.
Edited by Davesax1965 - September 18 2016 at 10:10
1485 - "early modern period". At least it was when I was at University. (Not that I was at Uni in 1485, of course. ;-) )
I said an "arbitrary" date of 1492, coinciding with European expansion and voyages of discovery. The actual end date of the Middle-ages is quite fluid, some historians using 1453 as a marker (the Fall of Constantinople), 1485 (as you cited), 1492 (as I cited), all the way up to 1500:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Middle_Ages
Which is why I never try to cite Wikipedia, as the dates are dependent on whomever is writing the article.
Davesax1965 wrote:
Henry VIII we all know about. King from 1509 to 1547. He is not generally seen as being a medieval ruler. Yep, Henry Tudor was a staunch Catholic. He reigns from the start of the early modern period.
So Catholicism was there in England prior to 1483. Mosh is saying that medieval England is nothing to do with Catholicism, if I've read his post correctly. Actually, there was a minority Catholic element to English society which was very well connected. Anti Catholicism really comes in with Henry VIII. If you're claiming the medieval period ends in 1492 (I'd prefer 1485, really) then you're talking about a period where the Catholic church in England exerts power and influence which is only later broken by Henry VIII.
I was not inferring that Henry VIII was a medieval king. I was inferring that the song in question had its roots in a 14th century Italian mode of playing, and hence medieval in influence. If anything, Henry was not Prog.
Davesax1965 wrote:
What Mosh is confusing, and Dean has pointed out, is that we don't really have much music from the "medieval" period in England. We do have music from later periods, which may sound "medieval" to Mosh, but actually come from later periods in music.
Oftentimes, people hear someone like Jeff Beck or Ritchie Blackmore playing "Greensleeves" and immediately think it is "medieval", when in fact it actually dates to the 16th century and is believed to have originated from the Elizabethan period.
...a vigorous circular motion hitherto unknown to the people of this area, but destined to take the place of the mud shark in your mythology...
Joined: May 23 2013
Location: UK
Status: Offline
Points: 2826
Posted: September 18 2016 at 10:25
No no, not disagreeing with you at all. ;-) Americans will tend to cite 1492, for obvious reasons. I tend to go for 1485. As I'm originally from Lancashire.
I laughed my head off at "Greensleeves", I'd forgotten that one. ;-)
For anyone with a proper interest in medieval music, this is a good page. We all might note that it's not confined to English music. The medieval ages happened elsewhere as well. Inconveniently for this thread.
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot create polls in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
This page was generated in 0.158 seconds.
Donate monthly and keep PA fast-loading and ad-free forever.
/PAlogo_v2.gif "Progarchives.com Homepage")
Medieval Influences and England role in Prog Rock
Topic Options
Hercules wrote:
