The Early Christian Church and Secular Song

Troubadours

and trobairitz were poet- composers who flourished in france.

Goliards

- poets and composers who were students or clerics and exalted a libertine lifestyle.

Philosophers

believed music was both an orderly system interlocked with nature and a force in human thought and conduct.

Beautiful things

exist to remind us of divine and perfect beauty, not to inspire self- centered enjoyment or seduce our senses.

Musical performances

were memorized or improvised.

Martianus capella

described the seven liberal arts- verbal arts (trivium), mathematical disciplines (quadrivium- included music because its mathematical relationships seemed to explain the universe)

Boethius

was the most revered authority on music in the middle ages.

Cantigas

de santa maria- collection of songs honouring the Virgin Mary.

Christian church

became the main and often only unifying force and channel of culture in europe.

Strophic form

- music repeats and melody stays the same with changing text.

Vocal melody

was intimately linked with the rhythm and meter of words.