Medieval

PERIODS IN MUSIC HISTORY

Antiquity and Medieval = 600-1400
Renaissance = 1400-1600
Baroque exactly = 1600-1750 (most important for all music archetypes)
Classic period = 1740-1810 (most important for all music archetypes)
Romantic =1800-1900
20th and 21st centuries = 1900-1999
Each period utilizes different perceptual level elements in different proportions to achieve musical expression

Beginnings of notated Western Music start @ 600 A.D. (C.E.).
- most cultures we dont have written traditions/notations that go far back, different that oral traditions
- might be because of cost of documenting stuff (paper and ink) back then
"Middle Ages" is a "catch term" for about 1000 years of Western Development
Long period, with lots of changes in music
- Development of concepts of melody
- Development of concepts of polyphony

Developments dominated by THE CHURCH
Notation was expensive back then
Required educated or trained personnel
- Monks, clerics, didn't care about popular music
- Vocal music most preserved (reserved for worshiping god)
- Relatively little pure instrumental music preserved
- Church Folk music was prioritized
Church music often based on traditions from non-Christian religions
- borrowings from Jewish Psalm singing and synagogue music and others

Sacred texts were sung in Church services
Most developments were associated with assembling music into an organized liturgy
- set order of church services
- the structure of each service)
Church services organized the day of the monks and clerics mass
Mass = lengthy ceremony that happened each day
- Divine Office - at least 8 other services throughout the day and night (shorter)
- Mass divided into 2 parts
  - Proper = things that changes form day to day and time
  - Ordinary = things that happen is the same all the time
Texts were specified according to the day/period of the liturgical year

Plainchant (plainsong) = Gregorian Chant
Many different composers of plainchant
Most famous, and first to systematically collect and write melodies for all church services, was Pope Gregory I (hence Gregorian Chant) @ 6th century (540-604 A.D.)
But there are others who contributed (Ambrosian chant)
Notation (writing down) of chants only really starts in the 9th century
"plain" because it is unaccompanied (voices only) — Monophonic
Plainchant manuscript circa 1250

Melody - small range
Harmony
- Scale/mode
Rhythm
- Meter
Timbre - male voices
Other
Cadences
conjuct motion, arch shaped for phrase, monophony
Reciting tone: Pitch that is used for the chant except for small formulaic variations at beginnings and ends of text phrases.
form = has to do with text itself

Daughter of a nobles, given to church as a tithe
Mystic, visionary, miracle worker.
Highly regarded in her won time.
Wrote music for the liturgy…uses expressive leaps, melisma, to portray words
Also wrote a morality play
- ORDO VIRTUTUM by Hildegard von Bingen
Syllabic
- Passages of vocalization with ONE notes to a ONE syllable of text.
Melismatic
- Passages of vocalization with MANY notes to a ONE syllable of text.

Entertainment music obviously existed for noble classes
Poet-Composers/Storytellers different names for same thing
- Troubadours (south France)
- Trouveres (North France)
- Minnesingers (German areas)
We know very little about how this music sounded
- Only poetry written down for most
- Older instruments no longer exist, or they are so damaged that we can't tell how they were meant to sound

Organum
usually have a tenner note (long held note)
counter point
in general is a plainchant melody with at least one added voice to enhance the harmony, developed in the Middle Ages.
imitative polyphony

School of Notre dame
Organum
a plainchant melody with at least one added voice to enhance the "harmony" (really counterpoint)
Synchronized counterpoints using rhythmic patterns - Notre Dame style (introduced fixed rhythms into polyphonic organum and motet)
6 rhythmic modes - Mainly triple meter
TERM DEFINITION - "Isorhythm" - using repetitive rhythmic pattern

ARS NOVA (new art, or new technique) start experimenting with the Tenner
After 1300 an era of humanism (same time as literary figures Chaucer, Petrarch, Dante)
Organum and Motets of Notre Dame composers thought to be too old - Ars Antiqua (old Art, or old Technique)
ARS NOVA composers carried rhythmic complexities to extraordinary degrees. Rhythm seems to have obsessed them.
Leading composers
- Phillipe de Vitry(1291-1361)
- Guillaume de Machaut (1300-1377)
Messe de notre dame

Melody - moves mostly by step within narrow range; uses diatonic not chromatic notes of the MODE (scale)
Harmony - most surviving music for the period is monophonic (chant) or monophonic trouvere/troubadour songs (HENCE, THERE IS NO HARMONY). Medieval polyphony (mass, chanson, motet) has dissonant phrases ending with open, hollow-sounding chords
Rhythm - Gregorian Chant as well as Troubadour and trouvere songs sung mainly in notes of equal value without clearly marked rhythms (we think). These are Non- metrical (we think). Medieval polyphony starts introducing rhythmic patterns of (mainly triple meter, usually in 3, cus of the Trinity), repeated rhythmic patterns (Isorhythm) and complex rhythmically organized counterpoints (ARS NOVA)
Color/timbre - mainly vocal (choir or soloists), little instrumental music survives. Instruments maybe used as drones (speculative).
Texture - mostly monophonic for Gregorian chant, troubadour/trouvere songs. Medieval polyphony is contrapuntal (two three or four independent lines - harmonies are a by-product of the part-writing, and not conceived as a fundamental organizational tool) (Early polyphony is the central process)
all about melody and harmony