Incomplete And Utter History Of Classical Music

INTRODUCTION
I

t's both a blessing and a curse not being able to sing a note of music. A note in tune, at least. In many ways, I feel almost Palaeolithic in my inability to have my larynx form anything bearing so much as a vague resemblance to something pleasant. It saddens me. On a particularly bad day, I can barely drag my knuckles out of bed and across the floor for thinking about the similarity between my vocal talents and that of a digestive biscuit. But, on the other hand, as someone who is constantly being accused of behaving like a man from an earlier time, it does mean that I feel I have more than a smidgeon of empathy with whoever it was who first managed to utter, incomplete or not, the very first musical note. Admittedly, no one really knows who it was, his good work lost to an age where the chances of keeping hold of an original document were less than they were during Watergate. Besides, as you can imagine, it wasn't really one person, it was an entire bunch of people, working separately, working together, working for kings and queens, for pharaohs and emperors, even entire kingdoms and dynasties.

So it's almost certain that any clever chap (and, sadly, almost certainly it was a chap) who got us from grunt to note - from savage breast to soothing rest - is never going to show up in the history books. T thought up plainchant for Pope Gregory, you know,' might make a good story down the pub, but it's not going to get you a place in Euterpe's^1 Hall of Fame. And don't for one minute think that this book is going to shed any light on them. It's not. It isn't called the 'incomplete' and utter history for nothing, you know.

What I will do, however - and don't say I don't give you anything. - is take a look back at which sets of people got the whole music business moving. And to find that out, you have to go way back. And I mean way back. And it's not to ancient Egypt, it's not to Shang Dynasty China, it's not even to the Sumerians or Greeks. You may not believe this, but it's only France, isn't it!