The first program tells how music began 35,000 years ago with hollowed-out animal bones. In India and China, music was a perfected art long before the birth of Christ. In the western world, music has only flowered in the past thousand years. Menuhin points to the basis of musical expression: man's sense of rhythm, first developed in the womb in response to the mother's heartbeat. Performing are Menuhin, Canadian composer Murray Schafer, jazz flutist Paul Horn, native singers and dancers from New Guinea, Senegal and Plains Cree Indians, Ukone of the Gwi people, Martha Takata of Syria, Abed Azrie, Nellie Karras Dancers, Greek singer Arda Mondikan, Ponti and Demotic Dancers of Greece.
The first program tells how music began 35,000 years ago with hollowed-out animal bones. In India and China, music was a perfected art long before the birth of Christ. In the western world, music has only flowered in the past thousand years. Menuhin points to the basis of musical expression: man's sense of rhythm, first developed in the womb in response to the mother's heartbeat. Performing are Menuhin, Canadian composer Murray Schafer, jazz flutist Paul Horn, native singers and dancers from New Guinea, Senegal and Plains Cree Indians, Ukone of the Gwi people, Martha Takata of Syria, Abed Azrie, Nellie Karras Dancers, Greek singer Arda Mondikan, Ponti and Demotic Dancers of Greece.
With the growth of music from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance came a blending of many voices. Palestrina and Gabrielli are but two of the early composers featured. Yehudi Menuhin traces the development of vocal music and forms of musical notation from the chants of Buddhist monks to the massed choirs of the Renaissance. Also: Ravi Shankar discusses Indian music, in which ornamentation and melodic purity evolved in place of harmony.