In music, we don't just do theory and practical. We also have to study music history. This here is a post on the first period that we studied: the medieval period.
The medieval period is often dated from AD 450 (the fall of the Roman empire) to 1450, but these are rough dates only. Not that much is known about medieval music, because not much music got written down, and much of what did get written down was anonymously written by monks so we don't even know that many composers of the period. That's not to say that we don't know anything about the medieval period, however. In this post I'm going to write down everything that I know, or think that I know.
Society at that time was ruled by two main powers: the monarchs and the Church. Of these two powers, the Church was the most important. Even the kings and queens had to pay attention to what the priests had to say. As well as being the centre of worship, the Church was also the centre of education at that day, and we all know how powerful knowledge is. Many children were sent to their local monastery at a young age to live a life devoted to prayer and study.
Because the Church was so important to society, society had to give a lot back to the Church. During that time, families had to give a tenth of what they owned to the Church (I think this was called a "tithe" or something like that). If a family had ten children, they had to give the tenth child to the church. Hildegard of Bingen was the tenth child of a noble couple (even the nobility had to give back to the Church), so she was given to a convent where she later became a nun. She had visions, which the Church accepted as authentic, which gave her so much authority that she could even challenge the priests. Hildegard of Bingen was a very learned woman and she wrote treatises on medicine and science. She also wrote poetry, some of which she set to music.
Which reminds me. Most music written in the medieval period was written for the Church because of the support and patronage of the Church. Much of this music was written in Gregorian chant, so-called because it was all codified and written down by Pope Gregory I. Gregorian chant is essentially a flowing line of music that moves mainly by step. It has no beats, but simply follows the natural rhythms and patterns of speech. It was purely vocal and was meant to make the singers (mainly men as later in the medieval period only men were allowed to sing in Church) experience feelings of reverence or something like that (I can't quite remember). As it consisted of only one melodic line with no accompaniment, it is classified as being monophonic.
Hildegard composed in a style similar to Gregorian chant, but because she hadn't received the same kind of musical training that the boys had received, her melodies had some other defining features to them, such as upward leaps of a fifth which create a feeling of expansiveness and repeating melodic motives, a feature seen in music today that was very rare in Hildegard's time. Hildegard used her musical talent to write a morality play called the Ordo virtutum. She also made sure that her music was written down, and it is thanks to this act that her works can still be performed today.
Anyway, that's enough about Hildegard for now. I'll talk about some other composers later, but maybe I should get back to the music in general.
As I said before, most music was written for the Church and was therefore sacred music. Sacred music was written for worship. The most important service of the Church is known as the Mass, and has different texts that were set to music. The texts are further grouped into two parts: the Proper and the Ordinary. The Ordinary texts are used day in, day out, while the Proper texts change each day depending on the occasion. (There are other Church services known as Offices if I remember correctly, but I won't talk about them now.) The liturgy is the name for the order and structure of Church services.
I'm going to focus on the Ordinary texts, because they're the same throughout the year. There are five Ordinary texts: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei. The words to the Kyrie are in Greek rather than Latin, hinting at Christianity's roots back to Greek times. The words of the Kyrie are "Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison" which means "Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy." The Gloria is pretty self-explanatory: "Gloria in excelsis Deo" means "Glory to God in the highest." The words of the Credo mean "I believe in only one God," while "Sanctus" simply means "Holy." Finally, the words of the Agnus Dei mean something along the lines of, "Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the Earth, have mercy on us." (I think there's another one called "Ite, missa est"- Go, it is dismissed- at the end of the service, but I'm not sure if it was actually a text or whether it was just something that the priest said. Perhaps someone can enlighten me on this one.)
More sacred music was written down than secular music. Music was written down using a system of dots known as neumes, which eventually evolved into the system that we have today. At that time, instead of being based on major/minor tonalities, music was based on a series of different scales, known as modes. I can't remember which modes were used in churches at that time though.
Although most sacred music was monophonic as mentioned earlier, as the medieval period wore on people got rather tired of a single line and tried to add in extra lines. Early attempts to add extra lines to music were all based on original Gregorian chants. In organum, plainchant was sung in one voice while a different line was sung in another voice. The original plainchant that the organum was based on is called a cantus firumus. There were also motets were multiple texts were sung simultaneously, and sometimes sacred and secular texts were combined. Some composers later wrote Masses using secular tunes as the cantus firmus.
Early polyphony often relied on perfect intervals like 5ths and octaves, or on simple oblique motion where one voice sings a drone note and another voice sings a melody on top, but eventually it became more complicated. Polyphony probably helped bring about musical notation, as it was necessary to notate more exact meters and notation for the many complex rhythms which worked against each other at times.
Apart from church music, there was some secular music as well, though a lot of it wasn't written down. The main performers of secular music of the day were either travelling musicians or musicians employed in cities and courts. Jongleurs and minstrels were versatile entertainers, and could provide lots of kinds of entertainment other than simply music. Trouvères, troubadours and minnesingers entertained courts in northern France, southern France and Germany, respectively. They were poet-musicians who were often members of aristocracy and royalty. Musicians often accompanied their noble lords to wars, such as the Crusades or the Hundred Years' War, to keep them entertained and to keep morale high. During these wars, musicians often picked up new musical ideas from musicians from other countries.
Secular music was primarily for entertainment. There as dance music, as well as music that told stories, like ballads. Popular story themes included love, crusades and political issues. Secular songs were sung in the vernacular, or the local language of the people, rather than the Latin of the church. Also, unlike sacred music, secular music sometimes used instruments. Instrumental parts were often improvised, so we don't know too much about what it sounded like. There were soft instruments, like the recorder, pipe, lute and harp, and loud instruments, like the shawm (a type of oboe) and sackbut (a type of trombone). There were also percussion instruments, like nakers and tabors (types of drums).
That's pretty much it about the medieval period- oh, wait, I've just remembered something. Earlier on, I said I'd mention some more medieval composers! Well, I only have two more here in my notes. Guillaume de Machaut wrote both sacred and secular music in the style of Ars Nova ("New Art"- there was also an "Ars Antiqua"). He was a poet and a cleric as well as a musician, and he worked in the courts of France. He wrote polyphonic chansons (songs). Rambaut de Vaqueiras was a troubadour and he wrote a piece of dance music known as Kalenda Maya (the First of May).
Wow, that was quite a lot about a period that I actually don't have that much information about! I'll be back later to talk about Renaissance music!
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