Announcements
• Activity 1 due 1/30
Announcement
• TA: Gina Schwartzmeier
• Office hour: Wednesday 11-12 (and by
appointment)
• Office: N 140
• Email: HOLMSEN@WEB.DE
Building Blocks of Form
• Theme
• A melodic idea used as a building block of
form.
• Thematic development: elaborating or
varying a musical idea
• Example of thematic development:
Beethoven’s fifth symphony
Medieval Period (c.500-1450)
• We know very little about music before
ca. 850 (no musical notation)
• Medieval genres
• Chant (Gregorian chant or plainsong)
• Organum
• Motet
CHANT
• Liturgical -music for the church service
• MASS (the most important ritual of
Roman Catholic Church) encactment of
last supper (communion)
• Two types of music
• Ordinary - texts that do not change
• Proper - text for the mass that changes
daily
CHANT HISTORY
• Legend of Pope Gregory the Great
(rules 590-604)
Pope Gregory I (c. 600)
The central question
• Music of the Roman church c. 680
• Transmitted to Frankish kingdom c. 754,
with no musical notation (Adoption of
Roman liturgy by Franks was part of
desire to unify Frankish kingdom
Central question of chant
• Melodies were transmitted orally until c.
890.
• Therefore, what did the melodies originally
sound like?
Chant notation
• Originally did not indicate pitch, only
melodic direction (singers still had to
know melodies by heart)
Characteristics of chant
• Monophonic
• No regular meter
Text setting
• syllabic-one note per syllable
• neumatic- several notes per syllable
• melismatic- many notes per syllable
Haec Dies
• For EASTER
• monophonic texture
• Mainly conjunct motion
• responsorial form (soloist alternating
with choir)
• Do any pitches stand out as being
important? Which ones?
ORGANUM
• polyphonic texture (a voice added above
the same chant)
Notre Dame School
• Dates: c. 1150-1220
• Important composers: Leonin and
Perotin
• Different styles
• Sustained-note style (original chant held
note under faster moving top line) VS.
• Discant style (notes moving together)
Notre Dame School
• Organum Haec dies (on the chant we
just sang)
• Chant in the lower voice in slow notes
• Rhythm of the upper voice is not
indicated in the notation
MOTET
• New texts added to organum (could be
sacred or secular texts)
• polytextual - multiple texts sung together
• all notes rhythmic, in patterns
MOTET
• O mittissima/Virgo/Haec Dies (13th c.)
• Two texts simultaneously
• Is the meter triple or duple?
Sound of Medieval Music
• In what ways does it sound different
from modern music?
Monasticism
• Daily cycle of prayer services, the first
starting at 2 am (called the Daily Office
or Divine Office.
• Usually vows of poverty, chastity, and
obedience.
• Great centers of learning and culture
Hildegard of Bingen
• Lived 1098-1179
• One of the few known composers in this
period
• Various roles: Abbess, visionary, wrote
poetry and plays.
Play of the Virtues
• Sung drama
• About the struggle of good and evil for
the soul
• Characters include charity, patience,
humility, chastity, obedience, etc, and
well as the soul
• Devil has a speaking.
Play of the Virtues
• Style:
• Originally monophonic
• Is it syllablic, melismatic, or neumatic?
• Wide range
Secular Music
• Travelling musicians: Goliards
• Troubadors,Trouveres, Troubaritz
• Courtly Love theme
• Unattainable woman
• Aspect of civilization (related to the cult of BVM)
Guillaume Machaut
• SONGS:
• Polyphonic settings:
• Follow forms of the poetry (patterns of
sections)
• Puis qu’en oubli
• RONDEAUX
• A B aA ab A B