Medieval to Renaissance Music: Comprehensive Notes for Exam

Troubadour

Poet–composers from the Occitan regions (south of France) who wrote secular songs in the medieval period, often about unrequited love, chivalry, and pastoral scenes.

Trouvère

Poet–composers from northern France who wrote secular songs in the medieval period, often about unrequited love, chivalry, and pastoral scenes.

Ventadorn

The most famous troubadour whose songs set the standard for later composers.

Strophic form

A song structure where the same music is repeated for every verse of the text.

Estampie

A popular medieval instrumental dance piece characterized by triple meter and a quick tempo, suitable for dancing.

Drone

A sustained pitch underpinning the texture of a musical piece.

Rebec

A bowed string instrument from the medieval period, akin to a violin.

Lute

A plucked string instrument, often likened to an early guitar in function and style.

Sackbut

An early form of the trombone.

Serpent

A bass wind instrument with a buzzing mouthpiece and a serpentine body.

Shawm

A medieval double-reed wind instrument that evolved into the modern oboe.

Motet

A typically shorter, polyphonic sacred work, often featuring imitative polyphony and sometimes homorhythmic moments, usually in Latin. Its text could be original rather than a fixed liturgical text.

Mass

A longer liturgical setting in sacred music, using fixed text (the ordinary of the mass) and often longer musical settings.

Imitative polyphony

A musical texture where the same melody enters in a staggered fashion across different voices, similar to a canon.

Homorhythmic texture

A musical texture where multiple voices share the same rhythmic profile, with all voices moving together in rhythm.

Mixed meter

Sections of music within the same piece that use different metrical groupings (e.g., combinations of 2/4, 3/4, 4/4).

Josquin des Prez

A Franco-Flemish composer known for both sacred and secular music; his Ave Maria motet is a representative example of Renaissance sacred music, employing imitative polyphony, homorhythmic sections, and mixed meter.