Part 10.  Technology marches On, As clear As A Ringing Bell.

Last installment we discovered that the invention of Automatic Pre-programmed music, preceded the invention of a proper codified music notation by 200 hundred years!

But that’s not to say that this technology took off like Guido of Arezzo’s musical notation. The programmable music playing technology found in

the “Book of Ingenious Inventions”  which was written in 850AD, didn’t really resurface until the 14^th Century, on the other hand, Guido’s codification of musical notoation became immensely popular very quickly, in fact it was so successful and well thought out, that it is still for all intents and purposes, largely the same system we use today.

The difference in adoption between these two inventions can be put down to 2 factors;

Need and Distribution.

Time and time again throughout history we see that without the latter, the former is not enough to take off.

(Although need can create a reason for distribution).

If Need is the mother of invention, then distribution is the father.

As were discovered in PART 8, Guido’s invention came from a pre-existing need that conductors and members of the choir lived with everyday.

They needed an efficient and easier way to learn and remember the chants that had evolved in complexity, as many arrangements contained 3 part harmonies.

But Guido’s work would not have become successful without the distribution and education of his system by the Catholic Church. Guido’s systems of remembering, eventually came with the reigning Popes notice and blessing!

We see this pattern repeated with the church organ, the Hydraulis was brought back into being in the middle east, it took off because Arabs were able to modify it and export them to a market with both a need and means of distribution – The Catholic Churches of Europe.

Which brings us back to automatic music.

Even though, the first programmable musical instrument appeared in the “Book Of Ingenious Devices ”  (along side the Hydraulis) at the start of the century, it wasn’t until the 14^th century that we see this technology being utilized.

And once again the church had a lot to do with it.

Believe it or not, it all starts with clocks!

Originally the first clocks used were water clocks and were still the same basic design created by our star from PART 4, Hero of Alexandria 1250 years before. These clocks were first used in conjunction with bells at Roman Catholic Monasteries, which were normally a center of much activity, often the hub of industry for the whole surrounding countryside.

There were brothers and hired help, busying themselves in the library, the workshop, the kitchen, the chapel, the mill, the mines and the fields.

The clocks were originally set to strike the bell at the passing of canonical hours, which under canonical law were times to pray.

The idea for this, spread to towns and cities and were used for all sorts of messages based on the ringing of the bell. Bells in church towers were increasingly used to call people to prayer, tell people of emergencies, deaths, weddings and town meetings.

It also became an important way for people to tell the time by the ringing of the hour. Initially the ringing of the bells was a job of manual labour.

Some designs appeared with a clock and some contained just a bell or later on a carillon.

Here we begin to find the appearance of clocks in these church and Town hall towers, soon designs started to vary greatly from town to town and country-to-country. As the bell tower was such a focal point to the town, Architects found an excuse to flourish. Musical arrangements of these bells were often created with a human need to pull the bells.

Somewhere in the 14^th century In Flanders a Bell ringer whom I haven’t been able to find out his or her name changed the game.

Using the same basic idea as Ktesilbios, they invented a cylinder with pins which as the drum rotated, tripped levers that would trigger striking hammers – the automatic bell ringer was invented. Its’s name?  The Carillon.

This invention took off in Flemish lands and then Holland, and then a little time thereafter throughout Europe and England.

It’s interesting to note that the English name for these bells were “chymme bells” which was derived from the Latin ‘cymbala’ meaning bells, this is how the word chimes came about.

The Dutch became quite fascinated with automatic ringing of bells and even designed a keyboard (baton console) to connect to these carillons, but the art

form never really took off.

It became standard procedure in Europe to have the chime sound to mark the passing of the hour or even the quarter hour, a tradition that stills persists in many a town and city today.

So how are these inventions significant to our evolutionary series?

Remember Need and Distribution, our mothers and fathers of Invention?

.. well if their offspring is invention – their “sexy thoughts” – their desire so to speak  is Marketing or Advertising!

Let me give you another example (no more biology metaphors I promise!)

To have a need, to be able to justify the act of distribution, people have to think they need the invention.

Now some needs are self evident, take for instance the caveman sitting in his cave thinking..

“I’m cold and I am hungry – and the plants I usually eat are all dead coz it’s winter. There’s these big hairy things out there with lots of warm fur and meat on them, I think I need to find a way of getting the fur on my shoulders and the meat on my fire and then in my belly.”

Not hard to convince the caveman of the need right? Well according to Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, proposed by funnily enough one  Abraham Maslow , the more primal the need, the more self evident they are.

Our survival needs, breathing, food, water, sex (reproduction of the species), sleep. These are our most primal, you take any of these away from someone and they’ll know it pretty damn quickly.

Second on the Hierarchy are issues of safety to do with shelter, clothing and safety for yourself and loved ones, it also covers having money to survive.

After that the hierarchy themes go in order;

Love/Belonging,

Esteem/respect,

Self actualization,

Maslow explains that it’s a hierarchy because while we never stop needing, the later hierarchical needs only become apparent after the fulfillment of the previous theme/level.

What also happens as we go higher up the hierarchy, is the needs become more subtle and less self evident – but. Don’t confuse the later needs as weak, as all these needs are strong within everyone.

What I’m getting at is that advertising/marketing in it’s many forms serve to point out those needs to us, making us think that the solution to our need, the answer to our problem of necessity is before our very eyes, even though as we go higher up on the Hierarchy of Needs scale, we may not even be consciously aware of need in the first place.

This does not mean that it is the answer to our need, in fact a great deal of advertising these days is designed to make us think that buying X product will in fact fulfill those needs, which in reality rarely do.

I think you get my point.

It is the marketing that provides the impetus for the need and distribution.

This new technology, this mechanical music of ringing bells was by it’s very nature extremely public and exposed people to the marketing of automatic music, of sound that became part of their everyday experience.

So not only do we have the start of an evolving sophistication of mechanical music, but an expanding awareness of the art form it’s self.

In our next part, we will discover how this triggered off a revolution that brought automatic music to peoples homes.

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