Medieval Music (400 ACE- 1400 ACE)

Music is sacred (tied with religion)

Melodies vary in complexity
Gregorian chant: Christian chants; started by Pope Gregory
Liturgy: texts & rituals throughout the service
Manner of Performance
a) Responsorial: soloist alternates with the choir or congregation
b) Antiphonal: two halves of the choir alternate singing
c) Direct: no alternation
Text-Setting
a) Syllabic: every syllable has a note
b) Neumatic: a few syllables have notes
c) Melismatic: long syllabic passages with notes
The Proper vs. the Ordinary
a) Ordinary: the parts dont change
i) The melodies may change depending on the church
b) Proper: changes daily
Genres and Forms of Chant
a) Recitation Formulas: simple formulas for declaiming prayers and Bible passages
i) Most words are chanted on a single pitch (usually A or C)
(1) Motives mark the ends of phrases and sentences
Psalms: Liturgical Songs
a) Strophe: a verse
b) Strophic: form of music with verses
Trope: Expansion on existing chant in order to increase solemnity
a) Adding new words and music before the chant or in between the phrases
b) Add melody by extending a melisma or creating new ones
c) Adding text (prosula) to existing melismas
Liturgical Drama: Plays that were linked to liturgy
Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179)
a) Women were excluded from religious music-making, making everywhere but in
convents
b) Women could perform all duties of their convent except officiating at Mass
c) Nuns had access to intellectual pursuits, including reading Latin and composing
music
d) One of the first prominent female composers
e) Most recorded female chant composer of all time
i) Hildegards Music
(1) Wide ranges, exceeding octaves by fourth or fifth
(2) Set her poems to music

(3) Best known composer of sacred monophony

(a) Known for Using:
(i) Rising fifths followed by a stepwise descent
(ii) Circling around a cadential note
(iii) Successive leaps spanning an octave or more
Presence of Chant
a) Polyphonic music based on chants
b) Chant was reformed twice- in late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries (also in
early twentieth century)

Medieval Music (Song and Dance) (800

ACE- 1300 ACE)

European Society: 3 heirs to Roman Empire

o Byzantine: preserved Greek/Roman science
o Arabic: extended Greek philosophy/science, fostered trade and industry
o Charlemagne: artistic achievement, improved education
o 3 Class Society
1. Guilds formed middle class
Vernacular Song: songs composed in French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, etc.
o Vernacular: common-informal
o Few songs preserved- quoted in other polyphonic music
1. Chanston de Geste
Epic, long heroic narrative
Northern France
Song of Roland
Professional Traveling Musicians
o Bards
o Minstrels
o Jongleurs
o Troubadours/Trouveres:
1. Poet-composers in France
Troubadours = South; Trouveres = North
Exist in other countries, such as England, Germany, Spain, and
Italy with different names
Adam De La Halle : most famous composer/troubadour
2. Troubadour Song:
Most are strophic, some contain a refrain (chorus)
Somewhat modal
Notation does not indicate rhythm except in later years
o Disagreement among scholars about performance
Dance songs most likely metrical; love songs most likely free
Unspecified rhythm
Unrequited love-overstated and dramatic
Ornamentism/Embellishment
Medieval Instruments:
o Vielle
o Hurdy-Gurdy
o Psaltery
o Bagpipe
o Bells

Transverse Flute
Shawm
Pipe and Tabor
Music
Instrumental
1. Mostly monophonic, some polyphony accompanied by keyboard
2. Steady beat, clear meter, repeated sections, predictable phrasing
Rondo Form: ABACABA: comes back to the same point
Societal Movement:
o Intellectual movement of Scholasticism:
1. Reconcile classical Greek philosophy with Christianity
Music leading into the 1400s:
o Polyphony
1. People who sang polyphony valued it as a concept central to medieval
art: an improvisation
2. Decorated and heightened the grandeur of the chant and liturgy
3. More possible to more complex things with development of Polyphonic
music
How Polyphony Changed Music:
o The rise of written polyphony is of particular interest because it inaugurated
four precepts that have distinguished Western music ever since:
1. Counterpoint, the combination of independent lines;
2. Harmony, the regulation of simultaneous sounds;
3. The centrality of notation; and
4. The idea of composition as distinct from performance.
Organum:
o Origins in performance:
1. Drone
Singing or playing a melody against a sustained pitch
2. Doubling parallel consonant intervals was probably common before it
was explained in anonymous ninth century treatises
3. Other kinds of motion:
Parallel voices move together
Oblique- one voice stays the same, other one moves
Contrary- both voices move in opposite directions
Similar- similar to contrary, less of a space
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Dance
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Free Organum:
o Duplum
o Triplum
o Quadruplum
Discant Organum vs Florid Organum:
o Discant:
1. Both parts move at same rate
o Florid:
1. Lower voice moves slower than upper voice
2. Lower voice is called Tenor
Notre Dame

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Leonin:
1. More basic, but still Florid Organum
Perotin
1. Began to add Triplum and Quadruplum

Motet:
Polyphonic work with one or more texted voice added to a pre existing tenor,
which is set in a modal rhythm
1. Basically, multiple texts.
2. Later motet texts were written in French on secular topics:
Latin -> Vernacular
Franconian Music
o Made it possible to signify more rhythms
1. Noteshapes signified relative duration
Double long, long, breve, semibreve
2. Layout of the parts could be separated
English Polyphony:
o Sung in the English language
1. Imperfect consonances were more prominent

French and Italian Music in the 1300s

Conditions were more difficult for Europeans in the 13th century

o The Black Death
Ars Nova: the final words of a treatise development based on Franconian notation
o Both duple and triple subdivision of note values
o Syncopation was now possible
Isorhythm: a series of given rhythms
o The tenor is laid out in segments of identical rhythm
Guillaume de Machaut:
o Leading composer of Ars Nova
o He enjoyed happy, sweet, and pleasing music
o Earliest setting of polyphonic setting of Mass Ordinary
Italian Trecento Music: somewhat similar to French Ars Nova- pushing boundaries of
rhythm, harmony, and polyphony
Francesco Landini: somewhat similar to French Machaut
o Blind from boyhood
o Played many instruments, virtuoso on organetto
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14 Century Music in Performance:
o There was no uniform way to perform polyphonic music
o Instruments
Haut (high) were loud, for outdoor entertainment and dancing
Trumpets, Shawms
Bas (low) were soft in volume
Harps, lutes, vielles
o Keyboard instruments
Portative and positive organs were common in secular music
Large organs began to be installed in German churches
o Instrumental Music
Instrumental played vocal music
Instrumental dance music was likely memorized or improvised
Musica Ficta: Chromatic Alterations :

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Raising or lowering a note by a half step to avoid a tritone

Pitches could also be altered to make a smoother melodic line
The resulting pitches lay outside the gamut, and were thus false, or Ficta
Often use at cadences
Singers were trained to recognize situations which a pitch needed alteration,
so the accidentals were rarely notated (modern editions put these accidentals
above the staff)