Music in Urcea: Difference between revisions

The invention of the {{wp|printing press}} was a pivotal moment in the development of coherent styles of music in Urcea, as what were once local developments that lasted the lifetimes of single minstrels could become lasting accomplishments, catching the ear of the wealthy and peasant alike. The Renaissance period in Urcea also lead to diversification of music types. Wealthy young privilegiata - and some optimates- began writing compositions for larger groups of musicians as well as for new instruments like the harpsichord. These composers wrote Church music as well as compositions for court and, in some cases, even composed music for minstrels to purchase. While there was no central music industry, individual minstrels and composers began to make a living selling compositions. Individual minstrels entered a decline by the beginning of the 1500s, as there were more avenues for the freemen and [[Social class in Urcea|privilegiata]] to hear and write music outside of the context of Church, and additionally, finding a trained transcriber to record their music was difficult and expensive. Despite the relative availability of music compared to previous eras, sheet music remained rare and expensive due to the rarity of transcribers outside the Church. The music of the vanquished class of minstrels remained, however, in the imagination of the rural populations, who continued to pass down versions of their songs from generation to generation, though by the 1550s most songs that remained in the rural consciousness were so distorted and, in some cases, deliberately altered that they sounded and read nothing like the songs initially received. The decline of the minstrel lead to the growth in popularity of the composer among the [[Social class in Urcea|privilegiata and optimates]], while the freemen took an interest in the new phenomenon of the so-called bardic-band, part-time locals who would gather to play music in one-off arrangements using songs that they had received from popular memory or songs that they had purchased from the city or courts. New instruments were making their way into the hands of rural bands as well, influenced by the music of the courts. The violin entered popular usage in Urcea in the 1540s, and it became the primary lead instrument of court music for the next few centuries. Older court violins were acquired by rural musicians, who developed a style vaguely resembling the style of the modern fiddle and other non-conventional styles of playing the violin. For the first time, violins were joined by the common lute, the most popular instrument in the home and in the tavern. Rural tavern band music remained story-oriented, though new stories relating love stories appeared. The sense of loss, a later staple of country music, made some appearances in these rural songs according to historians, loss brought on by the fighting of the [[Great Confessional War]] and the chaos of [[The Anarchy]]. The sense of loss as a central theme remained a staple of rural music. During the era of the war, rural music diverged into two forms, which initially retained nearly-identical instrumentation for a time. The first style was what is known as traditional music, which included stories about the Kingdom, the King, the troubles the Kingdom was undergoing, and how the peasant and family related to current events. A common song type during this period was that of a farm being raided or a love story ending with the singer, a man, "going off to fight cavalry", a euphemism for going to war without chance of return. This traditional style was considered a continuation of the earlier minstrel style, but it retained the musical developments of the era. The second style, referred to broadly as "proto-folk music", related more to the individual than to greater themes; it involved love stories without reference to war or political happenings, as well as the aforementioned sense of loss due to the hardships endured as part of the human condition, which was the focus of the proto-folk style. Both styles retained their [[Catholic Church|Catholic]] heritage, with the traditional form of music including an appeal to God to end the Kingdom's hardship while the proto-folk form included either appeals to end the personal hardship or an acknowledgement of fault for the hardships incurred. Many of the proto-folk songs of the period retained a moral, offering that the hardships incurred in life were due to a negative action taken rather than the regular hardships of life, though not all songs retained this element. Between the two styles, instrumental compositions were often shared during this early period of their existence. Later, by the early 1600s, the two genres would begin to diverge musically; maintaining the element of "labor song" and songs sung in the home, compositions of proto-folk dropped the use of flutes and fifes, while the traditional style retained them.

The 18th century saw the emergence of a fused theatrical-court style, emphasizing the high technical excellence and virtuosity of the composer with some room for improvisation within the piece. The Court-Theater Style is widely considered to be the birthplace of the modern solo. Unlike the 17th century's court music, however, this new "higher-end" form of music was available for limited public consumption. Due to the saturation of musicians in and around [[Urceopolis (City)|Urceopolis]], it no longer became possible to survive on patronage, and many newly organized groups of musicians began to play for the price of admission to relatively small concert grounds. The commercial success of such endeavors lead to a significant boom period in the 1700s-1730s of public musical expression for profit. The audience were typically urban [[Social class in Urcea|privilegiata]] and the concerts were often priced in such a way that they were unaffordable for the nascent working class and peasants, but through this point in Urcean history it was the most democratized music had ever been. A considerable deal of public theater and open space construction occurred in the first three decades of the 18th century, making so-called "audience music" even more viable, and the trend spread throughout other cities in Urcea. Having a much larger audience than courtiers, and having music for ears outside of the top refined optimates made an immediate impact on the kind of music being played, as Court-Theater music changed rapidly in the first half of the 18th century in order to appeal to the wider audiences. While the virtuosity and apprentice-master relationship of court music was retained, these first popular audiences much preferred more solos during pieces, leading to a kind of resurgence of the previous century's theater music. The "audience boom" came to an end with the beginning of the War of the Caroline Succession, however, as the time for audience music was replaced with church attendance duty for novenas for the benefit of the cause of Urcea and the Apostolic King. During the war, proto-folk songs sung by soldiers in camp took on new forms, incorporating the regional diversity of Urcean soldiers called to service of the King. These proto-folk songs, in turn, began to inform the traditional music style played outside of the battlefield by the army fife-and-drum core, as the two "original" Urcean musical genres continued to influence each other despite the historiographical divergence imposed on them during the 1600s.

Beginning in the late 1900s and 1910s, there began a renewed interest in what became known as "old-time" music, which could best be described as a mix of popular songs from the mid-to-late 19th century as well as obscure folk songs from rural parts of the country, but not truly "traditional music", which remained a separate genre. Historians and scholars have theorized the rise of interest in this music came as a consequence of the restoration of King [[Patrick III of Urcea|Patrick III]] and the memory of the bloodshed of the [[Red Interregnum]]. According to these historians, Urceans - especially middle-aged ones - pined for the nostalgic idyll of simpler times during the [[Aedanicad]]. The invention of the phonograph and rise of the Urcean recording industry made these songs viable, and in the 1910s the phenomenon of "songhunters" - individuals who would go to the rural parts of Urcea to discover old folk songs in order to obtain the rights to the music - sprang up. Old-time music became enormously popular and commercially viable. The advent of radio lead to further widespread popularity of the genre in the 1920s through mid 1930s. Sometimes called "country music", emerged as a dominant cultural and commercial form of music during the early radio era, though during the same time traditional pop styles imported from the rest of [[Levantia]] became popular. [[Cities of Urcea#Tarrin|Tarrin]], a city in [[Goldvale]] slowly transformed from a sleepy river town to the capital of country music, as the relative ease of access for rural and [[Ionian Plateau|Plateau]] singers to the city, availability of real estate, and access to recording equipment from [[Urceopolis (City)|Urceopolis]] via rail made it the ideal location to "harvest" traditional and old songs.