Genres Of The Middle Ages

In this two-part video serial, we're going to be exploring the music of the middle ages. On this channel we've discussed Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Impressionist and other genres and eras of music. This time we're going further into the past to talk about the middle ages.

You'll find a brief history of the music of the eye ages in this video – namely, the styles and genres that developed, how music evolved, and of class some audio clips to mind to.

Allow'southward go started!

Three types of music of the Middle Ages

There are 3 types of music we'll be looking at in this video series:

Sacred vocal music
Secular vocal music
Instrumental music

This first video will be defended to sacred (religious) vocal music. The follow-up video will discuss secular and instrumental music.

History of the center ages

Before we become into the music, though, let's get a grip on the climate of the centre ages. The centre ages span approximately 476-1450 Advertizing, more often than not considered to start around when the Roman Empire fell.

The middle ages is the period in between Classical antiquity (think Greeks and Romans) and the Renaissance (the blossoming of science and fine art).

In Europe, information technology was the Roman Cosmic Church that held most of the ability, and because of that, they controlled much of music'due south development in the middle ages.

Music style in the Eye Ages

During the 1000 years of the Middle Ages, music notation developed from about nothing to a primitive grade of our mod sheet music. Music notation as we know it completed its journey in the Renaissance.

Middle ages music originally had no rhythmic structure, but as the music became more complex, a need for rhythmic unity emerged. With this complexity came rhythmic notation.

In the early middle ages, music was monophonic, meaning a unmarried vox or tune line. Every bit fourth dimension passed, polyphony developed (multiple melodies). Polyphony is really interesting and led to the highly circuitous polyphony of the Renaissance, and somewhen to the fugues of the Baroque catamenia.

Music at this fourth dimension was modal, significant it wasn't based in any primal. There wasn't any concept of fundamental signatures until around the Baroque period. Music "modes" are basically the early course of central signatures. So instead of proverb "this piece is in the key of D", you might say, "this slice is in Dorian manner".

Sacred Vocal Music

Gregorian Chant

Gregorian Dirge is the well-nigh common proper name for a blazon of plainchant that originated in Rome. It's kind of like how we say "Kleenex" instead of "paper tissue" – Gregorian Chant is like the brand proper name version of plainchant.

And so what is plainchant? It's basically what it sounds like – an early style of music that is quite patently (only ane voice) and involves vocal chanting. This was the music used in Roman Catholic church building services like mass.

Pope Gregory the Great

Gregorian chant provides us with some of the earliest notated music e'er, since the monks and nuns of the fourth dimension were adept most writing things down. Pope Gregory the Smashing particularly made an important contribution – he helped organize the behemothic trunk of chants that had accumulated during the middle ages. This organization led to specific chants being used at specific times of the year during mass.

Pope Gregory'south contribution to plainchant was and then important that they named information technology after him (Gregory = Gregorian chant).

What does Gregorian chant audio like? Well, nosotros'll listen to an example in a moment. But as we already talked nearly, information technology's:

Monophonic (ane voice simply)
Has no rhythm (the melody follows the natural period of the text)
Written in Latin, and based on sacred texts similar the Bible
Adequately simple (no complex melodic leaps or jumps – information technology's pretty steady and stepwise)
Some melismatic text (many different tune notes with just a single syllable of text)

The example of Gregorian chant we're going to listen to is called "Universi qui te expectant", which is from the offset Dominicus mass during advent.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/lookout?v=UY-GB4ffTRw[/embedyt]

Video credits

Source: Recorded privately with members of Schola Antiqua

User: Mikebrubaker12

Organum

Gregorian dirge somewhen evolved into a genre called "organum" effectually the 9^th century. You accept to remember that the centre ages spanned about grand years, and these monks surely got bored singing the aforementioned monophonic chants over and over. They were spring to beginning experimenting and improvising.

Basically, these singing monks thought information technology might be fun to add some harmony to their single melody lines. This started out equally 8va doubling (singing the same note, just at a different octave), and eventually turned into singing harmonies of 4ths and 5ths.

4^th/5^th harmonies are basically not used today, unless y'all're listening to some really progressive or abstract music. They simply sound very foreign and anomalous to our modern ears. But back in the middle ages, it was the thing to practice.

Afterward the development of parallel organum, early polyphony began to develop. Polyphony is when multiple voices sing different parts, independent of each other. This more than circuitous style of polyphony really developed in earnest during the 12^th and xiii^th centuries in Paris.

These new developments are referred to equally "complimentary organum". Gratuitous organum used original Gregorian chants (chosen the "cantus firmus", fixed song) and newly-composed parts for a second, college vocalisation.

Rhythmic modes

Rhythm also developed alongside organum – instead of rhythm being completely unmeasured and random, rhythmic modes developed. At that place still wasn't any sense of meter at this signal, but various patterns of long and brusk rhythms added a little more structure to the music.

Cheque out a recording of Haec dies (organum) to hear what this sounds like. It'south incredibly melismatic (many notes on a unmarried syllable of text), which makes it quite confusing to mind to and sing.

You'll hear the original Gregorian dirge as the low vocalisation, and the newly-composed part in the upper voice. These voices movement independently of each other, but still manage to mesh well together.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaBluC8WpkI[/embedyt]

Polytextual motet

Past the time nosotros hitting the 13^th century, music evolved to be polytextual. This means exactly what it sounds like – multiple texts used in a single composition.

The reason this developed is because the melismas of organum became very difficult to sing. You had a one thousand thousand tune notes sung equally just one long syllable. To correct this problem, they decided to add new text to those crazy melody lines, therefore making them easier to sing.

These polytextual motets frequently merged sacred and secular music. You'd start with your sacred Latin text, but perhaps stick a French verse form on top of it.

Thus polyphony grew even more detailed, and the melody lines (at present usually in 3 parts) became even more independent.

Adam de la Halle

Though adding new text to hard-to-sing melismas was helpful for singers, 1 feature of this style of music is that information technology'south nigh impossible to discern what words they're maxim. That musical trouble would subsequently exist solved in the Renaissance.

I've got a video example for you to listen to over on the web log by Adam de la Halle – check it out if you want to get a sense of what layering unlike texts sounds like.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?5=7w0LXHlqpek[/embedyt]

Secular vocal music

Humans have been making music pretty much forever. And though the showtime part of our give-and-take on the music of the middle ages focused on sacred music, secular music was very mutual equally well.

The large problem with secular music from this era is that information technology wasn't well-recorded. Monks and nuns were literate and meticulous almost writing things downwardly. Simply regular folk tended to pass music traditions along orally, seeing no betoken of writing the music down (if they even could write).

Monophonic chanson

If you've always heard the expression "traveling troubadours", that term came from the poet-musicians of French republic in the 12^th and 13^th centuries. These musicians were usually college on the food concatenation (they had enough leisure fourth dimension to write and play music regularly), and some of their music has been preserved.

In general, what you lot'll find written down for these chansons are the words and the melody – that'due south it. No rhythm, no notes for instruments. And then researchers have done a lot of guesswork when it comes to reinterpreting these old chansons.

Comtessa de Dia

I found a file for the just notated monophonic chanson past a woman – information technology'southward called "A chantar m'er de so qu'eu no volria" (I am obliged to sing), and information technology's from the 12^th century. Information technology was written past the troubadour Comtessa de Dia.

Monophonic chansons were by and large in "strophic" course, which just means that for each poetry of words, the music and melody stays the same. That's true of this chanson. Information technology's besides completely monophonic with no accessory whatsoever (the PTV video version) – but when yous're looking into chansons of the middle ages, you'll find some recordings with instrumental accompaniment.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Zah4VWPiNE[/embedyt]

Video credits

Source

Sound credits: Makemi

Polyphonic chanson

In the 14^th century, the Roman Catholic church began slowly losing its grip on the European population, so secular music began to really thrive. This era is referred to every bit "ars nova" (new fine art), and the era prior to it as "ars antiqua" (old art).

At this betoken, polyphony became and then complex that music notation was forced to develop. Pitch notation became verbal, and rhythmic notation also evolved.

Another feature of these late chansons is that crazy melismas basically disappeared – the text became much simpler, with simply one to several notes per syllable. We besides see an evolution away from the dissonant 4^thursday and five^thursday harmonies, with the addition of the much more modern-sounding 3rds and 6ths.

Puis qu'en oubli

Puis qu'en oubli by Machaut is a practiced example of polyphonic chanson. The biggest divergence between this and the monophonic chansons we just discussed is its complication.

This chanson is written for iii voices, and all voices move independently (polyphony). One thing to note is that the "voices" don't take to be human voices – they could likewise be musical instruments.

I'll leave a link to a YouTube prune over on the blog. You lot'll observe how much more mod-sounding this chanson is (even though it still sounds very old). You tin can hear the inklings of Renaissance and Baroque music actually beginning to form here.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/picket?v=MeJdiIKwRm8[/embedyt]

Instrumental music

Instrumental music didn't exist in the church during this time – in fact, the just musical instrument even allowed in the church was the organ. Instead, instrumental music existed in the secular globe, and served a functional purpose, such as being used for dance, public events, and accompanying singers.

Unfortunately, like secular song music, instrumental music was not well-recorded, for the same reasons. It merely wasn't considered necessary to write downward music to the general illiterate public. Instrumental music was likewise highly improvised at this time, and so there wasn't much benefit of writing music downwardly to the musicians themselves.

Dance music

Trip the light fantastic toe music was the most common blazon of instrumental music in this period. These dances were functional – people actually danced to them. Later on, in the Baroque menstruation, trip the light fantastic music would evolve to be for listening equally opposed to just dancing (and thus would become way more circuitous).

Another interesting thing about instrumental music in the middle ages is that the instruments weren't standardized. Classical music, for example, has music written for specific instruments. There's a violin part, a trumpet role, and so on. But with music of the middle ages, instruments weren't specified. The type of instruments used would vary based on if information technology was an outdoor or indoor issue, or what people had available to play.

Estampie

We'll listen to an example of an estampie, which was a pop trip the light fantastic toe at the time. Information technology's called Retrove, and it'due south from the Robertsbridge Codex, a music manuscript from the 14^th century.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/spotter?v=c05RQnncS6s[/embedyt]

Video credits

Source

Attribution: Metzner

Summary

To sum up, these are the key developments we saw in music during the Middle Ages:

The development of annotation (pitch and rhythm)
Simple monophony to circuitous polyphony
Single texts to multiple texts in sacred music
Melismatic singing to simpler singing (i to several notes per syllable)
No rhythm to use of rhythmic modes

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed today's tour of the music of the Eye Ages! Since there isn't any keyboard-specific repertoire from this era, piano players tend to skip over this fascinating period in history. I think that's a mistake – it helps to see where the roots of Western music began.

xo,

Allysia