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.