Terms and Definitions – Sep.10, 17
Middle Ages: 400-1475
Monophony – a single line of music
Plainchant (plainsong, Gregorian chant) – monophonic vocal music used in church services;
monophonic Christian liturgical chant in free rhythm
Syllabic – one note for every syllable of text
Melismatic – a large number of notes sung to every syllable of text
Troubadour/trobairitz – a class of poet-musicians living in southern France in the 12th-13th
centuries
Strophic song – a song in which all stanzas of poetry are sung to the same music
Polyphony – music consisting of two or more independent lines sounding at the same time
(variants to know: free polyphony, imitative polyphony; equal-voice polyphony)
Organum – medieval polyphony most often based on a pre-existing plainchant
Rhythm – the organization of time in music, dividing up long spans of time into smaller, easily
comprehended units.
Ordinary of the Mass – the five sung portions of the Mass for which the texts are unvariable
(Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei).
Isorhythm – the repetition of a rhythmic pattern throughout a voice part.
Dissonance – the perceived instability of a complex of two or more sounds
Syncopation – a momentary contradiction of the prevailing metre or pulse
Hocket –a melodic line distributed between two voices in such a way that as one sounds the
other is silent
Motet – a choral composition with a sacred Latin text that could be sung during church services
as well as for private devotions at home
Homophonic (homophony) – a texture in which all the voices, or lines, move to new pitches at
roughly the same time