Artworks of some notes
Tessa Ruddy - The Daily Iowan
Issue date: 9/6/07 Section: 80 Hours
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A small group of monks cluster at the foot of a large leaf of parchment, their eyes fixed delicately upon the Latin text. Below the curving letters, diamond-shaped notes leave a peppery trail up and down the red-inked staff.
Sounds swell within the monastery's stonewalls for the third time that day, as tawny-clad monks begin to chant in somber unison.
These large sheets of music, as well as medical, culinary, and religious texts, are included in the exhibit Monks to Masters: the Medieval Manuscript and the Early Printed Book showing at the UI Museum of Art through Oct. 7.
UI music Professor Elizabeth Aubrey will give the fifth lecture in a series of nine, "From Singer's lips to Scribe's Pens: Music in Medieval Manuscripts," at 7:30 p.m. today in conjunction with the exhibit.
The lectures are a means to focus on different - very specialized - facets of the exhibit, said UI lecturer and curator Kathleen Kamerick.
Aubrey will outline the evolution from the oral tradition of music to the written representation of pitch, tempo, and text in Medieval manuscripts.
"Whenever I open up a Medieval book, I almost immediately get into the mind of the scribe," she said. "Why did he do that? What was he intending when he created that symbol and formatted things in that unusual way?"
Although music notation as we know it was not invented in Europe until the Middle Ages, songs and instruments of some kind existed on every continent, within every culture, traveling orally through generations for thousands of years prior to the creation of the quarter note. Even many artists today still don't know how to read music, including celebrated singer/songwriter Paul McCartney. But, Aubrey asserts, American pop, rock, rap, or classical music could not exist as it does today without notation's evolution.
"Jazz musicians, for instance," she said. "A lot of them don't really read music. And they might be able to hear a Chopin prelude on piano - if they were really, really good on keyboard, they might be able to play it back, more or less. But it wouldn't be Chopin."
Sounds swell within the monastery's stonewalls for the third time that day, as tawny-clad monks begin to chant in somber unison.
These large sheets of music, as well as medical, culinary, and religious texts, are included in the exhibit Monks to Masters: the Medieval Manuscript and the Early Printed Book showing at the UI Museum of Art through Oct. 7.
UI music Professor Elizabeth Aubrey will give the fifth lecture in a series of nine, "From Singer's lips to Scribe's Pens: Music in Medieval Manuscripts," at 7:30 p.m. today in conjunction with the exhibit.
The lectures are a means to focus on different - very specialized - facets of the exhibit, said UI lecturer and curator Kathleen Kamerick.
Aubrey will outline the evolution from the oral tradition of music to the written representation of pitch, tempo, and text in Medieval manuscripts.
"Whenever I open up a Medieval book, I almost immediately get into the mind of the scribe," she said. "Why did he do that? What was he intending when he created that symbol and formatted things in that unusual way?"
Although music notation as we know it was not invented in Europe until the Middle Ages, songs and instruments of some kind existed on every continent, within every culture, traveling orally through generations for thousands of years prior to the creation of the quarter note. Even many artists today still don't know how to read music, including celebrated singer/songwriter Paul McCartney. But, Aubrey asserts, American pop, rock, rap, or classical music could not exist as it does today without notation's evolution.
"Jazz musicians, for instance," she said. "A lot of them don't really read music. And they might be able to hear a Chopin prelude on piano - if they were really, really good on keyboard, they might be able to play it back, more or less. But it wouldn't be Chopin."
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