Should People Learn the Basic History and Fundamentals of Music?

Music is all around us, it is a part of our culture and for some it is a way of life! We all know how music is and how it should sound, but most people don’t realize that if it weren’t for previous musical eras, music wouldn’t sound like how it does today. Music classes after 6th grade aren’t mandatory and if people aren’t going into that field they don’t take music classes, so they don’t have the information anymore. It could only benefit a person’s brain to know some simple things about music. Seems how music has evolved over the decades, it seems obvious to know music’s history to understand our own music. Fundamentals should be tied in as well to help understand what music really is. People should learn the basic history and fundamentals of music to understand music, which can be seen through the different time periods in history.

To understand music you need to look at the history of music through the centuries and how it evolved. Music has been around for ages, but there are seven major musical eras. They are the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, 20th Century, and 1945-present. The Middle Ages are important to the history of music because of a couple composers, Leonin and Perotin, and Hildegard. They are very important because they laid out the foundation for music. Next is the Renaissance, it is important because music shifted from the middle ages by having different melodies and things like word painting were added. They had only male singers and had major composers like William Byrd. The Baroque Era is important because the harpsichord came into existence. This era was very different not only in music, but in most aspects, for example, it was more flamboyant then what was seen before. The most fa...

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... the music we have today.

Listening to music for a lot of people is a daily routine, could be just listening to the radio for back noise or even humming tunes. Music is all around us, on the TV, in commercials, in movies, and there are even musical toothbrushes! Music has become such a major part in everyone’s lives, so why not know how the music we love came about. It is important for knowledge’s sakes to know some basic history and fundamentals about music. It should be essential to know at least some things about music due to it being so big in our cultures today. In elementary school they have a music class, but it isn’t mandatory anymore after 6th grade in some states, North Dakota for instance. It could only benefit a person to know these things. People should learn the basic history and fundamentals of music to really understand what music is and has become.