School of Sacred Music
Sacred and Secular Musical Influences
Samuel Micah Hunter
10 July 2011
Sample Writing Assignment
Survey of Sacred and Secular Musical Influences
I believe that one of the biggest musical influences on sacred music in the medieval
period was secular song, and that conversely a big influence on secular music was sacred
compositional practice. I believe this for several reasons. First, the interplay between sacred and
secular music is readily observable in the work of composers of the time,1 such as Guillaume
Dufay in his Missa l’homme arme, which is a polyphonic setting of the Mass Ordinary using the
melody of a profane secular song as its musical basis. Secondly, the later Reformation practice
of men like Martin Luther utilizing known secular melodies or melodies specifically composed
to be in a folk style to communicate sacred texts indicates a secular influence.2 The complex
interplay between sacred and secular in the late medieval period is perhaps most convincingly
illustrated by the development of the 13th century motet. This is by definition a secular,
polyphonic vocal work, usually in the vernacular,3 yet it displays compositional techniques
pioneered in the sacred music of the Notre Dame School under such exemplary church
composers as Leonin (c. 12th century) and Perotin (c. 13th century). One example of such
interplay in the medieval motet is Philippe de Vitry’s (1291-1361) Detractor est-qui secunturverbum iniquum. This piece utilizes the tenor voice in a manner characteristic of the sacred
music of Notre Dame, and even bends the knee to this heritage in its use of the Latin tongue, yet
it is a medieval motet.
1
Samuel M. Hunter, A Survey Introduction to Music Theory, History, and Literature, (Canticum Novum Publishing:
Kalispell, 2011), 150.
2
Paul Westermeyer, Te Deum: The Church and Music, (Augsburg Fortress Press: St. Paul, 1997), 243.
3
Samuel Hunter, A Survey Introduction, 165.
Works Cited
Hunter, Samuel M. A Survey Introduction to Music Theory, History, and Literature.
Canticum Novum Publishing. Kalispell, 2011.
Westermeyer, Paul. Te Deum: The Church and Music. Augsburg Fortress Press. St.
Paul, 1997.