MUS111: Music History Survey
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Why Music History?
Ways of Looking at Music History
Fundamental Problems
Goals
Main Stylistic Eras in Western Music
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Middle Ages / Medieval (800-1400)
Renaissance (1400-1600)
Baroque (1600-1750)
Classical Era (1750-1800)
Nineteenth Century / Romantic (1800-1899)
Twentieth Century (1900-1999)
The Middle Ages
Liturgy: A particular order or form of public service laid down by a Church
1. Mass
a) Ordinary
b) Proper
c)
2. Divine Offices or Canonical Hours (not office hours!)
Monophony: Plainchant, Plainsong, Gregorian Chant or Chant
Melodic styles of Chant:
1. Syllabic (one note per syllable)
2. Neumatic (several notes per syllable)
3. Melismatic (many notes per syllable)
Example of early notation in Western music.
Notice the absence of clefs, bar lines, time signatures, and even precise pitches.
Example: Anonymous, Kyrie (plainchant)
Expansion and Additions to the Liturgy
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Tropes
Sequences
Musical form of the Sequence: AA'BB'CC' … 
Example: Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), “O Greenest Branch”
CD 1/1
Secular Song
Jongleurs: A medieval entertainer, sometimes a minstrel. The term covers a range of
entertainers and story-tellers.
Troubadours, Trouvères: Lyric poets or poet-musicians of France in the 12th and 13th
centuries. Poets working the south of France, writing in Provençal, are generally termed
troubadours; those of the north, writing in French, are called trouvères.
Example: Countess of Dia, “I must sing” (late 12th century)
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Strophic song — a song in which all stanzas of poetry are sung to the same music
Ends with a tornada, a brief two-line ending
Monophonic but accompanied by a vielle
Polyphonic Music
Polyphony: Music composed of relatively independent melodic lines or part;
contrapuntal; “many-voiced”.
Organum: Improvised or written voice part(s) sung against a plainchant melody.
Types of Simple Organum
1. Parallel motion
2. Oblique motion
3. Contrary motion
Example: Perotin (c. 1200), Organum on the plainchant “Viderunt omnes”
14th Century and Ars nova
General Historical Events And Their Implications
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Papal Schism (1378-1417)
One Hundred Years’ War (1338-1453)
Black Death (1344-50)
Literature and Art
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Dante’s Divine Comedy (1307)
Boccaccio’s Decameron (1353)
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1386)
Ars Nova — Late Middle Ages
Philippe de Vitry (1291-1361)
Guillaume de Machaut (1300-77)
Motet (Ars nova): A compositional genre in which a plainsong melody works as the
formal foundation. Over this borrowed melody, composers added newly composed
melodies, each with its own text
Hocket: (Hoquetus = “Hiccup”): A rhythmic device whereby a melodic line is split in
quick alternation between two voices
Example: Guillaume de Machaut, “Motet, “Quant en moy”
Example: Guillaume de Machaut, “Doulz viaire Gracieus”
Rondeau: ABaAabAB
AB=refrain (two lines of poetry, two phrases of music)
a=new text, first phrase of music
A=first line of the refrain
ab=new lines of text, two phrases of music)
AB=refrain