When did music stop being an almost exclusively oral tradition, and become a partly literate one?
Over 1,000 years ago.
The history of written music in the west began with the music for the services of the?
Roman Catholic Church.
In 2009, what did archaeologists find in Germany from 35,000 years ago?
A five-finger flute made of bone from the Stone Age, at least 35,000 years ago.
Pre-historic cave paintings, Egyptian murals, Greek pottery had surviving illustrations of?
Ancient music.
Psalm 150, the climax of the Psalmer (Book of Psalms) is an account of?
Singing God's praises in the ancient temple.
What is a Psalm?
A sacred song or hymn, with texts taken from the biblical Book of Psalms and used in Christian and Jewish worship; often collected in a book called a psalter.
No Jewish music was written down until when?
Modern times.
In the 1970s, scholars managed to transcribe the notation on a cuneiform tablet dating from around 1200 BC on the site of the ancient city Babylonian city of Ugarit. What did this tablet contain?
A hymn to the goddess Nillak, the wife of the moon god Kushuh
What is a hymn?
A metrical song of praise derived from Greek pagan practice; the term is now usually applied to vernacular Christian songs of worship.
Name the Epitaph which probably dated from the first century of the Common Era
The Epitath of Seikilos
What is an Epitaph?
Greek for "Over a tomb," that is, a short memorial poem
What country developed a pitch-specific music notation?
The ancient Greeks.
What are the two earliest Greek melodies?
Two Delphic hymns, praising the god Apollo, from around 130 B.C.
Greek music was important in...?
Remembering the dead.
The Greeks used what to indicate pitch and rhythm?
Letters and symbols.
The sung texts from the ancient Greeks were often accompanied by various kinds of instruments, including...
The Cithara or lyre, plucked string instruments, and the aulos, a wind instrument.
Who advocated banning most musical scales because, "More than anything else, rhythm and harmony find their way to the inner most soul and take strongest hold upon it." ?
Socrates, a quote from Plato's Republic (360 BC).