Lecture 5

Early Music

Terms

• Minnesingers• alba• pastourelle• strophic form• estampies• organum• melismas• motet• Ars antiqua• Ars nova

More Terms

• ars

• isorhythm

• hocket

Objectives

• Hear how elements and structures of music were typically used in the Middle Ages

• Identify and follow principle types of music written in the Middle Ages: plainchant, troubadour songs, Notre Dame organum, and ars nova motets

When?

• 476 C.E. (A.D.) or the fall of the Roman Empire to 1400.

• What do you know about this period?

• Seen anything in movies?

Stuff you should know

• Europe was invaded all the time. Huns, Goths, Vikings, Mongols, Islamic armies.

• European access to international commerce and communication dropped off.

• So the economy shifted to feudalism• Mass migration, invasions, famine, plagues.• Average person lived in primitive brutal

conditions• Greco-Roman advances lost.

General Observation

• Polyphony and music notation were the major musical achievements of the era.

Plainchant

• Roman Catholic Church was the primary patron of all things musical.

• Standardized liturgy led to a standardized was of writing music, called notation.

• By 1000 music was notated.• Singing heightened speech to the glory

of God.

Plainchant Characteristics

• Called “plain” because it is an unaccompanied, monophonic, unmetered, and non-rhythmic.

• Not constructed on major/minor system• Modes around D(Dorian), E(Phrygian),

F(Lydian), G(Mixolydian).• Describe the mood of In Paradisum• Look for characteristic uses of musical

elements.

Characteristics

• Smooth legato melody

• Moderate dynamic level

• Monophony

• Easy tempo

• Mode is Mixolydian

But what is most striking is what is not there . . .

• Lack of meter• Lack of strong cadences• Lack of clear symmetrical phrase

relationships• Creates floating otherworldlyness,

passionate yet serene.

Next . . . Recitation

• Vere dignum

• Simplification of melody.

• Text is more important rather than mood.

• Greater rhythmic feeling.

• Solo.

• Mode is Dorian

Plainchant sequence

• Columba aspexit

• Series of short melodies sung twice. Once by the soloist, once by the choir and modified.

• Drone.

• A A’

Music at Court

• 12th and 13th century.• Troubadours in southern France, Trovères in

northern France and Minnesingers in Germany. All were of noble birth

• Jongleurs were song writers of common station.

• Alba was a “dawn song”.• Pastourelle, seduction song of knight on

horseback and a maiden.

Evolution of Polyphony

• Organum is the earliest type of polyphony (900)

• Tradition plainchant with another person singing a different tune at the same time to the same words.

• Polyphony “evolved” in the period between 1000-1200

Evolution

• Each note accompanied by another single note (counterpoint). Parallel organum. Same interval same melody.

• Then the lines became more independent• Then they started to embellish. The

embellishments became so many that the original tune became long a drawn out.

• Then two counterpoints were added.• Then then it was metered

The two organum guys in Paris, 1163-1235.

• Léonin

• Pérotin

• Lets listen to Alleluia. Diffusa gratia.

• Melisma

Later Medieval Polyphony

• After 1200 polyphony distanced itself from the church.

• Upper lines given their own words. Now they were called a Motet from the french word ‘mot or word.

Ars Nova

• Started around 1300 with “new heights” of sophistication in motet writing.

• This motet writing was known as the “new technique” or Ars Nova and the old was organum or Ars Antiqua.

• Turbulent time in the world• Rhythm was the main pre-occupation of

the composers most notably . . .

Guillaume de Machaut (c.1300-1377)

• The Motet “Quant et moi”• Based on plainchant, played underneath the

singers in this case by a viol.• Isorhythm-successive lengthy passages to

identical rhythms but to different melodies.• Hocket is a hiccup.