Humanities – Music
Mr. Rawlings
Medieval Music Era
Plainsong
From the earliest times, people found that music could play a very important part in their
lives - perhaps to accompany ritual and worship, or to provide entertainment and
enjoyment. Few very early pieces of `entertainment' music, such as songs and dances, have
come down to us, since this kind of music was hardly ever written down.
The first people who really found a way of doing this were the monks of Medieval
times(Medieval meaning `of the Middle Ages'). And so most of the music, which has
survived from before the 12th century is that which was composed for the various services
of the Church. This music is known as plainchant, or plain song, or Gregorian Chant
(named after St. Gregory the Great, who was Pope from 590 to 604).
Troubadours
During the 12th and 13th centuries a great many songs were written by the troubadours-poetmusicians who lived in southern France. The name is connected with the modern French word
trouver, which means `to find', and so a troubadour was the `finder', or inventor, of both the
words and the melody of a song..
Many of these musicians were noblemen - one famous troubadour who composed at least sixty
songs was Thibaut, King of Navarre. Others, though, were of much humbler birth.
Whereas music for the church was set to Latin words, the troubadours used their own
everyday languages in writing the poems for their songs.
The melodies of these songs present us with one or two puzzles. All the songs are written down
in melody-line only. Only the pitch of the notes is clearly indicated, but not the rhythm. We must
guess what this may have been.
Matching the notes against the natural rhythm of the words is usually a good guide - but even
so, the same song could be written out in modern notation in several quite different rhythmic
versions.
The second puzzle is that although the music of each song consists of melody only, it is almost
certain that in performance there would have been some kind of instrumental accompa nimentperhaps also an instrumental introduction, postlude (rounding-off)and even interludes between
verses. A composer might accompany himself as he sang, or employ a minstrel to provide an
accompaniment (see the opposite page).
So in modern performances of these songs, these puzzles must first be solved. We have to make
a guess at how the rhythm should go and how the words are spaced, and perhaps devise some kind
of simple instrumental accompaniment.
The sound of plainchant may seem strange at first, for it consists purely of melody. The
voices sing in unison, with no supporting chords or harmonies, and there is no instrumental
accompaniment. The chant melodies move smoothly in small steps rather than wide leaps.
And the rhythm flows gently and irregularly, mainly matching the natural rhythm and
stress of the Latin words to which this music is sung.