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Medieval Music

Medieval Era

· Western music history begins around the sixth century AD.

· All notated music at this time was church music (chant).

· By the beginning of the eleventh century, throughout the Christian world, the Mass was (and remains) centrepiece. For High Mass much of the text would be chanted to music. ‘Ordinary' sections always used the same words; ‘Proper' sections used different words according to the feasts of the church year. The Mass was the central form of sacred music of the Roman Catholic Church, since the fifteenth century.

· The earliest musical form in the medieval church was plainsong, or plainchant (sometimes known as ‘Gregorian' chant). Plainsong is a single line of text or melody, sung either by the priest or by several voices of the choir in unison, or by the priest and choir in alternation. The melodies are classified according to mode and are associated with a particular part of the liturgy. Plainsong rhythm is the free rhythm of speech. Early plainsong notation is known as ‘neumatic'.

· Secular song flourished from the end of the eleventh century for 200 years. Minstrels who travelled between the courts of Europe enjoyed it. Secular songs mainly contained love-lyrics ("courtly-love"). ‘Troubadours', (virtuoso poet-musicians such as Marcabru, Bernart de Ventadorn, Guiraut Riquier and Adam de la Halle, who were mainly active in S. France), wrote their own lyrics in their own language. They performed to society, unaccompanied or sometimes accompanied by a harp, lute or fiddle.

Secular songs are monophonic. Its forms were called retrovenge, lai, ballade, rondeau and virelai. The last three forms and the secular motet are secular vocal forms of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
· Polyphony developed in the late Middle Ages. It is the combination of two or more melodic lines, providing ‘depth' to the music. Polyphony was at first based on plainsong with the melodies moving in the same rhythm, a fourth or fifth...