Eras and Elements of Music History

Eras of Music History

• Medieval: 500-1400
• Renaissance: 1400-1600
• Baroque: 1600-1750

Contrasting Poles in Music

• Popular vs. Classical
• Sacred vs. Secular
• Vocal vs. Instrumental
• Improvised vs. Composed

Aspects of a Musical Composition

• Style: The overall characteristic of a piece of music
• Texture: The combination of different musical lines or voices.
  • Monophonic: A single melodic line.
  • Polyphonic: Two or more independent melodic lines.
  • Homophonic: One melody played by multiple instruments at the same time.
• Form: The structure of a piece of music.
• Time: Tempo (speed) and rhythm (pattern of sounds).
• Expressive Meaning: The emotional impact of a piece of music.

Gregorian Chant

• Earliest music: Gregorian chant (plainchant) is considered to be the earliest type of Western music.
• Neumes: Ancient symbols that indicate the pitch and number of syllables in a chant.
• Melisma: A long series of notes sung under a single syllable.

Strophic and Rondo Forms

• Strophic Form: All verses or stanzas of a song are sung to the same melody.
• Rondo Form: A recurring theme is used throughout the song.

Early Christianity and Music

• Christian chants developed from Jewish temple chant traditions.
• Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in 313 C.E. with the Edict of Milan.
• Pope Gregory I (590-604) played a significant role in the development of early Christian chant.
• Liturgy: A service or ritual.
• The Christian church year is organized around a series of feasts, each with a special occasion.
• The Mass Proper: Readings, prayers, and chants that change based on the specific feast being celebrated.
  • There are 8 main components of the Mass Proper:
    • Introit
    • Prayer
    • Epistle
    • Gospel
    • Offertory
    • Secret
    • Communion
    • Post-Communion
• Gregorian chant was considered the purest form of official Catholic music for centuries.

Chant Notation

• Neumes: Symbols above the words in early chant manuscripts indicate the general direction of the chant melody.
• Ligatures: Neumes that include several notes.

Characteristics of Gregorian Chants

• Formulaic: Tends to follow predictable patterns.
• Three Parts: Beginnings, central sections, and endings.
• Monophonic: A single melodic line.
• Melodic Range: Melodies are generally narrow, graceful, and move in small intervals.
• Recitation Tones: Repeated pitches used for simple melodies.
• Common Structure: Chants often follow an AAABBBAAA structure
• Classifications: Chants can be classified in three ways:
  • By their texts
  • By their performance style
  • By their musical style (syllabic or melismatic)

Modes of Gregorian Chant

• Modes: There are eight modes (church scales).
  • Modes 1 & 2 (Dorian/Hypodorian): End on D
  • Modes 3 & 4 (Phrygian/Hypophrygian): End on E
  • Modes 5 & 6: End on F
  • Modes 7 & 8: End on G

Performance of Gregorian Chants

• A Cappella: Chants are commonly performed without instruments.
• Antiphonal: Chants are performed by alternating choirs.
• Responsorial: Chants are performed by a soloist and choir alternating.

Gregorian Sequence

• Gregorian Sequence: A text added to the closing melisma of an Alleluia chant, often used to memorize the music.
• Rhymed Pairs: Sequences typically have rhymed pairs of lines: AA BB CC DD

Hildegard of Bingen

• Hildegard was a Catholic nun of the Middle Ages who served as prioress of a Benedictine convent (1136-1158).

Hildegard's Musical Style

• Wider interval range than standard chants.
• Includes both the upper and lower registers of the female voice.
• Highly melismatic.
• Ambitious in length.

Hildegard's Ordo Virtutum

• Ordo Virtutum is one of Hildegard's most famous works.

Minstrels and Jongluers

• Wandering entertainers.
• Their songs told stories of real and imagined historical events.
• Chanson de geste: A tale describing a hero's adventure.

Goliards

• Wandering students and clerical dropouts in medieval England, France, and Germany.

Troubadours

• Composers of the 12th and early 13th centuries from southern France.

Trouveres

• Composers of the 12th and early 13th centuries from northern France and England.
• Wrote poetry in Old French.

Troubadour and Trouvere Songs

• Simple monophonic melodies.
• Repeated verses.

Can vei la lauzeta

• Troubadour song: An example of a lament.

Lament

• A medieval genre in which a rejected lover is driven to despair.

Adam de La Halle

• One of the last and greatest of the Trouveres.
• Wrote a Pastourelle: A traditional medieval genre concerning a romantic episode from their life.

Minnesingers

• Post composers of the German nobility.

Meistersingers

• The successors to the Minnesingers.

Medieval Instruments

• Percussion Instruments:
  • Naker: Old, round drum.
  • Tabor: Drum held with the performer's left arm.
• Plucked String Instruments:
  • Harp: A string instrument.
  • Lute: A string instrument.
  • Psaltery: A string instrument with a wooden box.
• Bowed String Instruments:
  • Rebec: Three-string instrument.
  • Vielle: A string instrument that evolved into the modern violin.
  • Dulcimer: A string instrument with strings that were hit with small hammers.
  • Hurdy-Gurdy: A string instrument with a wheel and crank to set the strings vibrating.
• Soft Wind Instruments:
  • Pipe: A wind instrument.
  • Recorder: A wind instrument.
  • Transverse Flute: A wind instrument.

Medieval Dances

• Ronde: A circle dance popular in France.
• Saltarello: An Italian hopping dance with a fast triple meter.
• Estampie: A stamping dance.

Organum

• **Organum: ** The earliest genre of polyphonic music in Western Europe.
• Developed by adding one or more melodic lines above or below plainchant.
  • Parallel Organum: An additional voice duplicates the original chant at a fifth or fourth above or below.
  • Free Organum: The added voice gains some independence.

Terminology for Organum

• Cantus Firmus: The original chant.
• Tenor: The original chant.
• Vox Principalis: The original chant.
• Duplum: The added voice.
• Vox Organalis: The added voice.

Magister Leonin

• Producer of a collection of organal settings of solo portions of responsorial chants, including the Alleluia.

Notre Dame School of Organum

• By the 13th century, Paris became an important intellectual center.
• Magister Leonin is credited with producing a collection of organal settings of solo portions of responsorial chants.

Rhythmic Modes

• Similar to modern notation of compound time, with beats divided into three pulses.
• There are six rhythmic modes.

Organal Style

• Polyphonic settings by Leonin and his colleagues would substitute for the corresponding monophonic portions of the chant.

Discant Style

• Used for the melismatic portions of the original chant.
• Both the original melisma and the added voice are set in a rhythmic mode.
• Clausula: A portion of the organum set in discant style.

Magister Perotin

• The successor to Leonin as the leading composer of the Notre Dame school.
• His organum may have been composed for performance in Notre Dame Cathedral at the Feast of St. Stephen (1199).

The Motet

• A ceremonial or expressive vocal genre that originated from adding poetic text to the upper voices of a discant clausula.
• Polytextural Motet: Each upper voice has its own text.
• Leonin-style Motet: A two-voiced motet based on organum duplum.

Cadences in Organum

• In two-part writing, cadences often proceed from a 6th to an octave or a 3rd to a unison in contrary motion.
• In three- and four-part writing, phrases are often ended with a perfect consonance (octave or octave and 5th).

French and Italian Music

• Phillippe de Vitry: A 14th century poet, composer, and music theorist.
• Vitry's style involved a system of notation that recognized the duple division of larger note values.

Isorhythm

• Isorhythm: A compositional device in which a melody contains two essential elements that can be repeated several times.

Guillaume de Machaut

• A Catholic cleric and composer.
• Wrote over 400 poems and a significant amount of sacred musical compositions.