Development Of The Carol Essay -- essays research papers

The seasonal songs popular in western music, especially in companionship with the Christmas season, known as hums, have a rich and complex annals full of tradition and controversy in the realms of both sacred and profane music.     The concept of singing sings to celebrate holidays developed during the 13th century in France, although what was to be known as hum music had been around from centuries earlier. It is believed that when minstrel Saint Francis of Assisi had made the offset printing-year Greccio crib, he began to sing songs honoring the nativity and the joy of jubilance in religion, for this was a strict Puritanical eon wherein communal singing, drama, and any type of festivity was looked down upon in the first place, and absolutely abhorred in religion.     The concept of singing these sings gained popularity throughout Europe towards the residue of Puritan reign and the growth of the Mystery Play throughout the fourtee nth and 15th centuries. The Mystery Plays were dramatic human beingss celebrating the birth of Christ. The basic plainsong and antiphony of the time were lacking the drama required by these performances, and soon spiritual songs for these performances were being written in the vernacular for these plays. The still popular slope "Coventry Carol" dates back end to this period. By the end of the 15th century, carols had begun to sustain on their own as anonymous pieces of music, and were dung on most all religious feast days, including Christmas, Easter, and throughout the Spring in celebration of the peoples emancipation from Puritanism.     As mentioned earlier, the music that these early carols were based on dates back to the 9th and 10th centuries Medieval period, where it was used as dance music. The word carol itself is derived form the Latin "choraula," which was a monophonic ring dance attended by singing during the Medieval era. The fo rm of the early carols followed the binary construction of these dances. It consisted of the stanza, which was basically a verse, and was used as a resting point for the dancers, and the burden, which was a theme repeated at the beginning and ending of each piece as well as between each stanza. It expressed a sort of summary of the music, and was the time for the dancers to really swing.     Anothe... ...the 19th century, the better carol music had been weeded out form the worse, and it began to be collected in a more systematic fashion. Countries throughout Europe began to amass their old carol folk songs into collections of national music. An innumerable number of old carol tunes that were inscrutable in the memory of old country folk were rediscovered and published for the first time.     Today Christmas remains the most popular season to celebrate with carols. the States has birthed her own collection of Christmas carols, although one w ill find these more unexampled 20th century carols to have much less of a companionship with religion, if any at all, than the older European carols. A wide mutation of carols form various geographic areas and eras continue to be sung by choirs and vocal ensembles, in churches, and for various forms of entertainment. There have even been implemental arrangements and contemporary renditions of many of the older carols. Although in many ways the carol has been modernized, especially in the American culture, the beautiful simplicity and antiquity of the music, as well as the remarkable history and tradition they imply, cannot be ignored.