Medieval music recreated and performed for the first time in 1000 years

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Hmm. Sounds a bit too modern in its tuning. Shouldnā€™t the fifths at least be a bit sharper?

The headline makes it sound like there was a big discovery, but there wasnā€™t. A lot of hard work and interpretation, but other scholars have done the same. We still canā€™t read this music.

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Fun fact: this type of notation is the basis for shape note (Sacred Harp) singing prevalent in Appalachian tradition.

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Oh man I love mountain music so much!

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Why would the fifths be sharper? Then you get very audible ā€œbeatsā€. Thirds, fourths, sevenths, etc are all debatable (this was well before well tempered, equal tempered, or stretched), but octaves and fifths areā€¦ And @PatRx2 likely knows the exceptions to this ruleā€¦ Fixed and agreed upon.

The tune was fantastically played.

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There is nothing to read. You start with the sixteenth century, and slowly trace musician to teacher backwards. This describes a tradition, not a formula. So you trace the tradition.

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ā€œThis video has been taken down due to a copyright claim by Knights of the Roundtable, LLC.ā€

I heard theyā€™ve employed Merlin as their lawyer because if his uncanny ability to sniff out infringement throughout time.

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The music is just a cover for their plans to dig a tunnel connecting to the casino vault.

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Depends. There was written polyphonic music back to LĆ©onin. Actually, Guido dā€™Arezzo had added staff lines to notation in the previous century (i.e., in the early 11th century), which was a necessary precondition of polyphony. This would have applied less to popular music, though, where oral traditions would have held sway. Stillā€¦ Sumer is icumen in.

Temperament would likely have been Pythagorean just intonation, so @LemoUtanā€™s point is taken - we donā€™t use perfect fifths in meantone or well-tempered tunings. Theyā€™re all slightly flat to remove the comma and allow re-entrancy in the cycle of fifths. Still, itā€™s debatable that most people would notice the fifths as sharp. Our fifths have a very slow beat; just fifths have none.

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I wish I could find a shape-note group around here.

Of all the days for @japhroaig to get musically pwned.

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@OtherMichael

suck it, pat and i agree.

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Whereā€™s Jethro Tull when you need them?

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Well, Martin Barre has retired. Mind you, Tull has played often enough with the original line-up in recent years, which means Mick Abrahams on guitar, so itā€™s all good.

Edit: Oops. Glenn Cornick died a couple of years ago, so not-so-original line-up these days.

That this was well-before well-tempered etc is exactly my point. The ā€˜modernā€™ fifth is 1.4142ā€¦ (square root of two) times the frequency of the tonic because of such well-temperedness. The ancient fifth, the pythagorean one, was in the ratio 3 to 2, i.e. it would have sounded sharper.

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iā€™ll bet you my bottom dollar that while i agree with your math, the artists still would have flattened them.

No dispute there!

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Iā€™ll take that bet.

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Which artists? The medieval ones, or the modern ones performing the recreation?

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