Music in the Middle Ages
(450-1450)
Historical Background
• Because of the domination of the early
Catholic Church during this period, sacred
music was the most prevalent.
• The Church was able to dictate the progress of
arts and letters according to its own strictures
and employed all the scribes, musicians and
artists. At this time, western music was almost
the sole property of the Catholic Church.
Historical Background
• Beginning with Gregorian Chant, sacred music
slowly developed into a polyphonic music
called organum performed at Notre Dame in
Paris by the twelfth century.
• Secular music flourished, too, in the hands of
the French trouvères and troubadours, until
the period culminated with the sacred and
secular compositions of the first true genius of
Western music, Guillaume de Machaut.
Gregorian Chant
• The early Christian church derived their music
from existing Jewish and Byzantine religious
chant. Like all music in the Western world up
to this time, plainchant was monophonic.
• The melodies are free in tempo and seem to
wander melodically, dictated by the Latin
liturgical texts to which they are set.
Gregorian Chant
• As these chants spread throughout Europe ,
they were embellished and developed along
many different lines in various regions and
according to various sects.
• Many years later, composers of Renaissance
polyphony very often used plainchant
melodies as the basis for their sacred works.
Notre Dame and the Ars Antiqua
• Sometime during the 9th century, music theorists
in the Church began experimenting with the idea
of singing two melodic lines simultaneously at
parallel intervals, usually at the fourth, fifth, or
octave. The resulting hollow-sounding music was
called organum and very slowly developed over
the next hundred years.
• By the 11th century, one, two (and much later,
even three) added melodic lines were no longer
moving in parallel motion, but contrary to each
other, sometimes even crossing.
Notre Dame and the Ars Antiqua
This music thrived at the Cathedral of Notre
Dame in Paris during the 12th and 13th
centuries, and much later became known as
the Ars Antiqua,
or the "old art."
Notre Dame and Ars Antiqua
• The two composers at Notre Dame especially known
for composing in this style are Léonin (fl. ca. 11631190), who composed organa for two voices, and his
successor Pérotin (fl. early13th century), whose
organa included three and even four voices. Pérotin’s
music is an excellent example of this very early form of
polyphony (music for two or more simultaneously
sounding voices).
• This music was slowly supplanted by the smoother
contours of the polyphonic music of the fourteenth
century, which became known as the Ars Nova.
The Trouvères and the Troubadours
• Popular music, usually in the form of secular
songs, existed during the Middle Ages. This music
was not bound by the traditions of the Church,
nor was it even written down for the first time
until sometime after the tenth century.
• Hundreds of these songs were created and
performed (and later notated) by bands of
musicians flourishing across Europe during the
12th and 13th centuries, the most famous of
which were the French trouvères and
troubadours.
The Trouvères and the Troubadours
• The monophonic melodies of these itinerant
musicians, to which may have been added
improvised accompaniments, were often
rhythmically lively.
• The subject of the overwhelming majority of
these songs is love, in all its permutations of
joy and pain.
Guillaume de Machaut and
the Ars Nova
Born: Champagne region of France, ca. 1300
Died: Rheims, 1377
- Joined the court of John, Duke of Luxembourg and
King of Bohemia around 1323, serving as the king’s
secretary until that monarch’s death in battle at Crécy
in 1346.
- the first composer to create a polyphonic setting of
the Ordinary of the Catholic Mass (the Ordinary being
those parts of the liturgy that do not change, including
the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei).
Guillaume de Machaut and
the Ars Nova
• The new style of the fourteenth century,
dubbed the Ars Nova by composers of the
period, can be heard in the "Gloria" from
Machaut’s Messe de Notre Dame.
• This new polyphonic style caught on with
composers and paved the way for the
flowering of choral music in the Renaissance.
Machaut’s Secular Music
• Machaut also composed dozens of secular love
songs, also in the style of the polyphonic "new
art."
• These songs epitomize the courtly love found in
the previous century’s vocal art, and capture all
the joy, hope, pain and heartbreak of courtly
romance.
• The secular motets of the Middle Ages eventually
evolved into the great outpouring of lovesick
lyricism embodied in the music of the great
Renaissance Madrigalists.