The Common Origins of European and Middle-Eastern Music - Epic Talking 

Link to the older videos: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Oj_e9wTXMUI.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-9VMZttMcZr8.html This video will be a very high level, general overview of how music theory developed over time in the western areas of Eurasia from a common root in Mesopotamian and Ancient Greek music theories, diverging over time in two distinct branches, one dealing with vertical harmonic pursuits which gives us the Western tradition, the other with horizontal modal pursuits, which gives us the Eastern traditions. Sources: The Ancient Greek roots of Mediterranean Tonality and its Hemiolic Typology and their antithesis to Western tonality: www.academia.edu/50584752 /The_Ancient_Greek_roots_of_Mediterranean_Tonality_and_its_Hemiolic_Typology_and_their_antithesis_to_Western_tonality, Aleksey Nikolsky The Rise of Music in the Ancient World : East and West, Curt Sachs Ancient Greek Music, Martin L. West Ancient Greek Music: A New Technical History, Steven Hagel Microtonality in Ancient Greek Music, Michael Hewitt The Sound of Medieval Song, Timothy J. Mc Gee Music in the Texts from Ugarit, Matahisa Koitabasi: www.academia.edu/38789419/Music_in_the_Texts_from_Ugarit A Musical and Mathematical Context for CBS 1766, Leon Crickmore: www.academia.edu/1618638/A_Musical_and_Mathematical_Context_for_CBS_1766 Musical Ensembles, Krispjin: www.academia.edu/37109059/Krispijn_iconea2008_Musical_Ensembles_pdf The Babylonian Musical Notation and the Hurrian Melodic Texts, M. L. West: musicircle.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Babylonian-Notatin-and-the-Hurrian-Melodic-Texts_Music-and-Letters-1994-WEST-161-79.pdf Is Nid Qabli Dorian ? Tuning and modality in Greek and Hurrian music, Stefan Hagel: www.academia.edu/47502712/Is_nid_qabli_dorian_Tuning_and_modality_in_greek_and_hurrian_music The Musical Instruments from Ur and Ancient Mesopotamian Music: Anne Draffkorn Kilmer: www.penn.museum/people/person/999 New Light on the Babylonian Tonal System, Leon Crickmore: www.academia.edu/278555/NEW_LIGHT_ON_THE_BABYLONIAN_TONAL_SYSTEM_ICONEA_2008_11_22 Was Mesopotamian Tuning Diatonic? A Parsimonious Answer, Jay Rahn: www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.22.28.1/mto.22.28.1.rahn.php Mesopotamian Music Theory Since 1977, Anne Draffkorn Kilmer: www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110340297.92/html Mesopotamian Music (pre-Islamic), Bo Lawergren: www.academia.edu/11728399/Mesopotamian_Music_Pre_Islamic_in_English A Hurrian Musical Score from Ugarit, The Discovery of Mesopotamian Music, Marcelle Duchesne-Guillemin: urkesh.org/attach/duchesne-guillermin%201984%20the%20discovery%20of%20mesopotamian%20music.pdf Interview with Anne Kilmer: archive.ph/ewHL7 The Archaeomusicology of the Ancient Near East, Richard Dumbrill The earliest evidence of heptatonism in a late Old Babylonian text: CBS 1766 www.academia.edu/243915/Earliest_Evidence_of_Heptatonism Organum Duplum aux 12ème et 13ème siècles, Alban Thomas, academia.edu/resource/work/84526550 Organum, Encyclopedia Britannica, www.britannica.com/art/organum Performing Medieval Music, Part 2/3: Turning Monophony Into Polyphony: earlymusicmuse.com/performingmedievalmusic2of3/ The Ancient Art of Organum: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-N37SWKrUz0w.html • "The Sound of Medieval Song, Ornamentation and Vocal Style According to the Treatises" Timothy J. McGee, Latin translations by Randall A. Rosenfeld Intro 00:00 Mesopotamia 02:00 Ancient Greece 08:55 Middle-Ages: the East 12:50 Middle-Ages: Western Europe 19:30 Associations: “this sounds Eastern” 24:40

For those of us who have seen the other videos, at least we get to witness Canadian weather at its finest. Very interesting.

dude looks like one of those sumerian carvings came to life

Hi Farya. I've been aware of some of your other epic talking videos, and speaking as an ethnomusicologist: There's nothing in here that made me shake my head. Two things in particular made me happy… Well, one, since both concern bias; evidence and association. I'm forever correcting people that music wasn't invented in Mesopotamia or Ancient Greece. They're just the places that documented it. Documentation does not automatically mean origin; just evidence marking that it was present. I often talk, not of regional musical development, but regional musical aesthetic development, leading to traditions, genres, and sub-genres. I prefer this because it avoids any implications of musical evolutionism (often placing European classical music as the highest developed musical form based on use of structured verticality). Anything falling outside of modern Western aesthetics tends to be subject to imagined exoticism or Orientalism, and thus we get your "sand" and "camel" remarks, which is something I often argue with people about too. Well done for a great summary. And yes, I could argue here and there about verticality, but that'd go beyond Western Eurasia or documented evidence. ;)

Time-travelling Pahlbod brought modern equipment to the imperial garden of Khosrow II and is explaining to us how music works.

I love this man and everything he does. Insanely talented guy.

When you started to speak of the Greek, it rained as you are surrounded by all that greenery and thriving vegetation. My hope is that it is an omen that the fires blazing utter destruction through my country right now will soon be quenched by a similar fortune, Farya. And BTW, my favorite ancient song from your compositions is EVOCATI'S PLEDGE. It is the same tonality and rhythm and mode as the "Kato Horo" of my island, which is how we begin the traditional dances with two steps forward, one step back. These steps, in that sequence, is the basis for most dances in Greek tradition no matter the rhythm or speed or exceleration of the rhythm as the music progress, in those plethora of dances all over Greece and even the wider region as they all have the same core: dancing in a circle of unity too. In fact, I was struck dumb when I visited ancient Pella and Philip's Tomb where there is a wall painting above, close to the ceiling with the people depicted holding hands crossed over one to to other, with the right hand being on the bottom of the arm of person to your right and the left hand being above the arm person to your left, braided with one and other going all the way around the circle (and this is the same as when the dancers hold on to eachother by the shoulders too, as in the pentozali for example). It is same way as we do today not only on my island but in the wider region in many traditional dances. That composition of yours truly feels like home when listening to it as I stated in that video post, not only for the words but because of the core essence of that composition. So, thank you for that one Farya, above all. It was music for my soul.

Homeless time traveler man now has a snazzy tent after being stuck in the tapestry realm. The lore expands.

The fact this man sat while it rained like it was a british autumn evening and got actively soaked yet remained talking and didn't get distracted is a level of commitment few people have. Amazing video but this detail might be, unintentionally, the best of all; truly eBic talking indeed.

Love your videos, was thinking wether you might be interested in doing something on Native American/Indian music as its a topic thats generally left unexplored or ignored in the western sphere. I know its not part of your expertise but i thought it might be interesting for you to take a look at :)

Love Epic Talking! An Eastern Orthodox friend of mine and I were talking about the similarities/differences of Byzantine Chant and Older Gregorian Chant (Both Solemnes and Semiology methods). My theory is that they both came from the same place and that there would have been an original Chant style similar to some of the Middle Eastern Chant styles (possibly Antiochian). I have found a few people online that agree but there are some others who disagree. You seem like someone who doesn't mind slapping Santa Claus for the sake of the truth. What do you think?

The red curtains with red flowers is peak

"Our next step in this evolutionary history...IS ANCIENT GREECE" "You are weak music, this is the Greek music. This is the strong music, okay. This is the Greek god, okay. Greek god."

Morteza Hannane pointed out in his lost scales: Protus: Yekgah Deuterus: Dugah Tritus: Segah Tetartus: Çahargah. The church modes really did explode in the region, ending up in Armenia, Georgia, Russia, and of course the West.

So you're Canadian 😎 That explains the incredibly beautiful backyard 🤩

That explains why i have the same song saved in my play list 100 times performed slightly differently.

Usually, I listen to your talk videos while doing something else... But honestly, this video is so amazing that the moment it started to rain heavily... my ears fell in silence and stopped hearing the words...And I started enjoying seeing you having fun lecturing in the rain :)

Extremely informative and much appreciated.

I feel as though this is a nice conclusion video and companion video for every other Epic Talking video you've made so far. I've watched every other one of those videos, and am still happy to see you wrap it all up together in one last video. Anyways, I hope you have a lovely day! I look forward to the next major musical and/or cultural topic you decide to cover, and whatever smaller topics you cover along the way to its conclusion!

I love these Epic Talking videos. You're probably my favorite channel right now, I love hearing the music you make and I love learning about the theory and history behind it. Very informative

Your content makes me really interested in Ethno-Musicology. I’ll be going to college next year and I plan to major in music but I don’t know what I want to specialize in. Knowing there’s more options than just Performance and teaching makes me greatful

You know what I would be interested in. If you are up for it. Proto-Indo-European music. A reconstruction of it based on the cultures that came from it. How would that have sounded like? As this goes back to the Neolithic. So it would have been Neolithic instruments most likely.

Thanks for these educational videos! I've been diving into ancient history recently because of my hobby of historical archery, and these vids add another (musical) layer to my understanding of the time 🙂

Yassssssss! Another video essay!

i love your videos because i often come out of them challenging assumptions i didnt even know i had. its great!

Hi thank you so much for this interesting video!!

I have to say it´s not only music. Eastern mediterranean it´s the home of montheysm, western fhilosophy, even little things as the order in were we eat. Really the only reason while muslim and christians world antagonice each other it´s a deep unknowledge of for the main part brother culture, who drinks in the same roots.

You say that “West Eurasia” (as you summarize it) isn’t commonly thought of as a unit, but I think it makes a lot of sense to do so. It’s not just in music that this space has developed into two distinct and contrasting traditions from broadly common origins. I think that holds true for the history and anthropology of the region in general.

Farya carries the light of reason into today. I always enjoy his take on things, coming from a very knowledgable background. To understand music is to understand humanity.

Interestingly enough, religions tend to work like that too. Christianity started as a Middle Eastern religion that died out in its place of origin, but was adapted in Europe. Buddhism was an Indian religion that mostly disappeared from the subcontinent, but spread and continued to live on in East Asia.

Hey my friend. First let me say I love your videos and music, I think you are doing a real great job of educating, and debunking, while remaining accurate. This maybe outside of the point of this video, but I to want encourage, remind and share the acknowledgment of western folk traditions. Many of which would have been outside of the established schools. The same ones that say Phillip Tagg and Cecil Sharp talked about. Some of these areas would have been somewhat isolated for the most part for centuries.With their music continuing to be inherently improvised and ornamented and less affected by western art music. Their pentatonics and gapped modes being highly indigenous. These populations immigrated in numbers to the rural U.S. and Canada.Which was the bases for a lot the inflection and style of genres that develop into todays popular music. Of course it blended with the music and theory from the Continental European system as well as some other regions. But I strongly feel this one of those cases that are based in reality and often misunderstood, much like the whole ‘ that must be middle eastern music and not Greek’. Thank you Farya for your wonderful videos and the opportunity to comment:)

Very enlightening!

I know this is basically just anecdotes and the musical equivalent of bro-science on my part, but those common roots aren't totally surprising. I'm from Germany and listening to some of our own medieval songs, or how some of our medieval instruments sounded I always had this feeling that the further back it goes the more similar it sounds to middle eastern music. Shared Greco-Roman and Mesopotamian influence makes so much sense!

Maybe, sociological models of culture also have a say in why many people see culture in this isolated and ahistorical way? Many academics tend to see all aspects of culture as some kind of closed system and often as somehow fundamentally based on the current dominating religion. It probably originated as a warped interpretation of the likes of Max Weber.

Awesome video! I just want to add that people have all sorts of assumptions when it comes to cultural associations, not just music, but fashion, architecture, art, cuisine, etc. Just from my own experience, one of my Muslim friends saw a Coptic church in the town we live and thought it was a mosque, and then said that the church had gotten it's architectural influence from Muslim architecture. In reality it was the opposite, and it was mosque architecture that was influenced by Byzantine and Coptic church architecture in Egypt and the Middle East, which is why mosques in Iran or places like Central Asia and India generally have a different architectural design and have more Persian origins. But because domed roofs are associated with Arab/Muslim architecture in our modern world she just assumed that the church architecture must've been influenced by mosque architecture and couldn't imagine a vice versa scenario.

That's probably why the eastern music is familiar and very nice sounding to greak ear.

Hey Farya, there's a chance to cover music of Christodolous Haralaris? Is one of the most famous byzantine musicologist of Greek world. Greetings and best wishes ❤

great! thx

Est donc ben belle, ta cour. Classique été 2023 dans le sud du Québec : de la pluie. (Je préfère ça aux feux de forêt... Btw, kescé qu'tu fais en pantalons en plein été 😨) Merci pour cette vidéo informative! Le n00b et ignare que je suis apprécie ta série Epic Talking

You often name the phrygian and double harmonic/hijazkar scales, but apparently never the phrygian dominant/hijaz scale, which to me seems far more popular, and is my personal favorite.

The musicologist Dr. Laurence Picken spoke of a Eurasian cultural continuum, which would also include the court banquet music of China's Tang Dynasty (7th-10th centuries AD), which was heavily influenced, in terms of its instrumentation, modes, and repertoire, by the musics of Central Asia (especially Sogdiana and the oasis state of Kucha), whose musics and cultures had already been heavily influenced by India. Here are two examples of Tang court melodies that I think show this Central Asian influence: v=9hjR8GumJsY v=CeugpTQKnM0

I just noticed the video! Well, for some reason I haven't clicked on the bell to receive notifications? Mistake corrected!

Man, this was a small detail but there’s something you said that really piqued my interest. About the possibility that rasgueado (flamenco strumming technique) was influenced by a middle eastern technique. I know this was a throw away what if, but I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with that one. Ive had the thought for a couple years now that flamenco and banjo may have been influenced by the same thing (banjo by way of the west African akonting.) It’s that these two demand a really particular way of playing. This sort of shaping of the hand so that there’s a mix between melodic patterns warped into a percussive strum, using the full body of the instrument. And it’s not just these two either; like if you look at the Dombra of Kazakhstan or even a shamisen. They all demand this style of play over instruments that are oddly similar in both sound and construction. Now what I’m not saying is that this originates in the Middle East, only the possibility that the Middle East is a link in the chain for this way of music making. I’m curious what your thoughts on this may be; whether it’s a kind of pipe dream that is unknowable, or if I’m missing something that might fill in the blanks of my argument.

Thank you for your videos I have been watching your videos for week continuesly? can you go a bit more deeper into the melodies and what notes were dominant in the historical musics? when harmony and how verticality came popuular in the music world?

I have an idea for a name for the area you talk about at the beginning : the extended Mediterranean world : taking all the Mediterranean bordering cultural areas and the cultural areas that border them and are historically related to them. So Europ,e, the Middle East, the Caucasus, the Persian Gulf, Arabian peninsula, Noth Africa,the Indus Valley and Western Central Asia.

21:42 Je veux pas être un pédant, mais euh… Hossein Alizâdeh a déjà fait ça… Hahahahaha!

Thanks Farya, I think you skipped the whole Genghis Khan part of history. Did it have an influence? I think this whole western vs eastern is a red herring. I agree with the core of your argument. I appreciate you putting this down in one vid.😊

When I heard the chord at 20:12 I immediately thought of Hometown by Twenty One Pilots

wow nice

♥️☀️💚 lovely 🌹

Babe wake up! Farya just posted a new documentary

I think we need a Blibamesh cameo.

27:56 Best part

A thought occurred to me: In my experience a lot of people have little problem understanding that potatoes are not from Ireland, and tomatoes are not from Italy. Potatoes are now a huge part of Irish culinary culture, and tomatoes are now a huge part of Italian food, but it's not a big mind-fuck to people, in my experience anyway, to realize that those crops didn't exist in all the Old World until the Columbian exchange. Why then is it so hard for people to realize that the "crops" that define the musical traditions of a place might not have been there from the start, might originate in a place that's not your first association of them? Perhaps there's just not enough musical education out there. In America, where I'm from, we all learn in school about the Columbian exchange, so the concept of potatoes not being from Ireland is instilled in us early on, but we just don't get the basic equivalent facts of music history. The most I ever learned about music outside the modern western tradition is that pentatonic scales sound "Asian." Music education here doesn't even do a great job teaching about Jazz, which is America's most unique and influential musical tradition. At least I learned about the Beatles. I would not be the same if my Elementary School Music teacher didn't expose us to the Beatles.

Is it me or was the sample at 4:15 All Star? lol

❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

bro every time you talk about diatonic scales it throws me for a loop as a byzantine musician, bc our "diatonic" scale has quarter tones in it. it's actually our "enharmonic" scale that is closer to an equally-tempered scale

❤

For a long time to me, Europe, Middle East, and north Africa are really culturally close regions, culturally and historically, and that's why, I love ancient culture since being a child, so I grew up reading about this ancient world, when east and west were not as much separated as they appear today.

wow! i always thought Bagpipes and the things they play sounds very MidEstrn

I'm going to be honest, I didn't follow any of what you said when it started pouring rain on you I just kept worrying about your microphone as you slowly scooted back in your chair without acknowledging the rain 😂

please make a carthaginian war music

anybody who studies ancient history cannot deny that western Europeans originated in the middle east. it's amazing how one sees the similarities once you start looking.

While I very much agree with the points you bring up, as all the evidence is sound, and as a long time fan of balkan slavic music, I've always doubted the idea of turkish influence, and I generally always assumed that balkan music is naturally that way predating the arrival of the turks. However, I can't help but notice that the range of ancient greek derived melismatic/chromatic traditions in Europe does correlate astoundingly well to the spheres of islamic conquest. For instance, why is the greco-roman style retained only in the flamenco of the far south of Iberia, closest to Africa, and not anywhere somewhat further away, such as the Basque country, or Galicia, and this tradition is carried on in Greece and the Balkans, the area of eastern europe that was under ottoman control, but not beyond the ottoman core territory, such as in Ukraine or Carpathia. By drawing a map of Andalusian and Ottoman rule, it does almost exactly mimic the range of melodic traditions in Europe, why didnt say, slavs further north retain the medieval european style. While I dont believe in the arabs/turks introduced it idea, you have to admit the correlation is so consistent you can't blame anyone for assuming it to have been the case. What do you think the reason might be?

It's a little bit like hair and eye color. If the Spanish and Italian have brown hair and eyes it comes from Arabs

Hi Farya. I've really loved your videos. The barrier of the Western idea of itself makes it very difficult to find reliable research so many things preceeding the invention of the Western ideas of itself. The Western Modern classical music tradition is such an anomaly in the history of music. You'd probably really like research by Dr Rebecca Futo Kennedy whose making much progress in the language and perspectives of the Mediterranean basin regarding Classical Studies, which she herself calls Studies of the Ancient Mediterranean. I would love to talk about music regarding my own to bring me to the right perspective. I was going write that the comments on ornamentation of heterophonic melody would probably also account for the type of notation systems in medieval and ancient music. Whereas vertical polyphonic harmony really requires that notation so you know which notes to play simultaneously. But you said moments after. There was some significant push back by Vincenzo Galilei against polyphony in Italy during the Council of Trent hoping to return to monody feeling that the Ancient Greek monodic music was far superior to the polyphony. There's a good video on it here - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-jSxBXPlDSwE.html - Ultimately not something that prevailed historically. But then the baroque was undermined by German neoclassicalism which ties back into your Westernisation of the ancient mediterancean narrative. I'm writing this on September 11th. I always felt after 9/11 there was a strong resurgence in the West to double down on its divisional traditions to see itself as a Judeo-Christian world and divide itself from Near Eastern culture. A really repugnant cultural movement and very different from pre-9/11 when if anything the West was beginning to appropriate Near Eastern cultures - hiring Tarsem Singh to make 'orientalising' music videos. I love the idea of the necessity for the West to accept its traditions as very much shared in musical traditions etc. I watched several of your video now around Ancient Greek music so these comments are a kind of a summary from all I've just binge watched. Love your honesty and accuracy, but also the clarity around it without trying to orient (no pun intended) a 'western ear' by making references to western music which only misaligns the imagination. I have a copy of that Stefan Hagel book On Greek Music that you read from in your microtonality video - but it's kind of over my head, I bought it thinking it would be an more up to date book on the subject compared to M L West's 1992 book. Interested how you'd think the performed vocals of Cantigas of Alfonso X and the vocal patterns of Perotin Music were sung in comparison to the recordings available. Of which there are beautiful recordings but now I expect them to be sung quite differently. The comment was interesting about the aulos and bagpipes. If the ancient greek aulos sounded like any more familiar modern instrument to Western musical instruments it would sonud like bagpipes. In books the aulos often gets translated as being like a flute, a clarinet, or an oboe which are an utterly different. It's that resonant piercing sound, that's neither smoothed out nor muted. The only fail of comparing it to a bagpipe is you can't stop a bagpipe so it doesn't give you the punctuated sound. On medieval bagpipes, one of my favourite pieces of music is Amor Mi Fa Cantar alla francesca - which youtube uploader attributes to Francesco Landini, but I think it's by Gherardello da Firenze, because it sounds nothing musically or lyrically like anything Francesco Landini made and everything like Gherardello da Firenze. My own work is/has been focused for years on Greek tragedy fa poet rom a "writing" perspective - though it's more devised in a company of dancers and singers. And there's nothing about Ancient Greek tragedy that is Western. There's no continuity at all. I've only grasped it by looking into many aspects of cultures from "the East" - which I've adored learning about. There are things that are western about it - metaphor, irony, etc - but in terms of the dramaturgy of its theatre it's what we'd today call an Eastern type of theatre that Western productions get wrong every time by trying to stuff it inside the conventions of modern acted theatre. Even to imaginatively conceive of telling the 'narrative' required me to look at the visual culture of non-Western art. Not only Eastern cultures that are major nations now but pre-Columbian Americas, Oceania, and regional African traditions. Anything but representational optical art. I've written my own tragedy and satyr play, and 'translated' my own version of two plays in English and Spanish, and written analyses of all the neglected tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles. I play guitar and piano and all this microtonlity just makes me look at these instruments and weep. i've been listening a lot lately to the Iranian composer Kayhan Kalhor. But I have a question, if I bend a string on my guitar can hit microtonal notes?

Interesting video. Just a question Farya, you like to mention about how the medieval Arabs borrowed musical modes from the Ancient Greeks. However, is it possible that they were just adapting local near eastern musical traditions (that might even predate Ancient Greek music) that was simply expressed using Ancient Greek music theory, due to Greek being the lingua franca in the near east prior to the Islamic conquests? In other words, were the maqams originally expressed in terms of Greek tetrachords because the tetrachord system was the just the musical "language" of the time and it was just convenient to express them as such as they were close enough to be compatible. As much as western music has changed, the west still use Ancient Greek modes as a reference in its theory, even Jazz scales use the names of Ancient Greek modes, that doesn't mean Jazz modes come from Pythagoras.

Old greeks was eastern. Thats because. Greeks also influced by sumerian and old mesopotamians

FIRST BABY

I though that flamenco was a tradition of the roma. Is this not true?

Isn’t Flamenco from the gypsies who where an exiled people from Pakistan?

GREEK LANGUAGE 🇬🇷 IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL LANGUAGE ON EARTH 🌍❤️‍🔥 That's why our lord JesusChrist spoke some words in Greek 🇬🇷☦️

FIRST

Thank you, fascinating

دادا من عاشق موزیک های افسانه ایی ات شدم درود شاهان بر تو