music of the middle ages

Music of the middle ages Music has been a great influence in the lives of many people for many years and is constantly changing.. The Medieval period was the longest and most distant per

Music of the middle ages

Music has been a great influence in the lives of many people for many years and is constantly changing Music has been divided into six

periods: Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, and Twentieth Century

The Medieval period was the longest and most distant period of musical history and consists of almost a millennium’s worth of music To

examine the music of this period we must first look at the influences or dominating factors of medieval life

In a political sense, as well as a spiritual sense, the Roman Catholic Church was very much the focal point of a Medieval man's life Between the collapse of control of the Roman Empire around 500 A.D and the Renaissance in the middle 1400s, the Church remained the most

continuously powerful organization in Europe

The great gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages help demonstrate how religion had become the focus of the times The thousands and thousands

of hours of labour, the tremendous cost involved, the extraordinary and detailed craftsmanship without the use of cranes or power tools must give us an idea of the effects of religion and the power of the Church To worship God through one's craft was the highest artistic ideal of the times While some of the great secular classic literature of the past was well known to many, it was considered to be only a teaching tool to assist in the understanding of the Bible

Music has always been an integral part of religious celebrations

throughout history, and for the Catholic Church of antiquity, it was a vital element

The music of the Catholic Church absorbed Greek, Jewish, and Syrian influences among others, through the teachings of :

Pythagoras 6th – 5th BCE, a Greek mathematician and a musical theorist who believed that there were perfect intervals in music and introduced the 8ve, 5th, 4th, whole tone Pythagoras’ ideas gave music scientific credibility through numbers and allowed it to be introduced as one of the sciences

Plato 427 – 347 BCE / Aristotle 384-322 BCE, Greek philosopher’s whose teachings introduced the idea that music is ethical Plato believed that music could generate ethical space and could have an effect on the moral fibre of a person The power to cleanse, to create an ‘ethos’ He believed that the idea is created by the thinkers (Speclatores) and that it’s interpretation is a mirror of the idea (Speclum), and that the

representation was carried out by the doers, the musicians, artists etc (Cantores) Plato believed that thinkers were more important than doers Music was seen as one of the sciences and therefore was controlled by the theorists (Speculatores) who decreed that music should be good to

transmit good things lest it should introduce impure thoughts Music in it’s most superior form could not be heard Only by mirroring

(Speculum) could it be heard

Aristoxenus 375 BCE, student of Xenophilus and Aristotle researched pitch, intervals, scales, keys, modulation and constructed melodies He introduced the Tetrachord (4-note) Aristoxenus wrote books on both listening to and making music and playing instruments He examined the nature of rhythm (strong vs weak) and supported division into 3 as perfect, and into 2 as imperfect using Pythagoras’ ideas on number perfection

Emperor Constantine 306 – 337 AD, became the emperor of Rome in

306, and was the most powerful person in his part of the world His conversion to Christianity had far reaching effects on the common

practice of the religion and on all the factions of Christianity that are present today His conversion happened during a war with his

brother-in-law and co-emperor, Maxentius According to the historian Eusebius , Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine, before the crucial battle of Milvian Bridge, Constantine was convinced that he needed divine

assistance While he was praying for such assistance, God sent him a vision of a cross of light at midday, bearing the inscription "in hoc signo vinces " ("in this sign you will be victorious") That night he had a dream that reaffirmed his earlier vision God told him to use the sign he had been given as a safeguard in all of his battles Thus, Constantine

converted to Christianity and ordered the symbol of his Savior's name (the intersection of the Greek letter chi and rho) to represent his army Constantine was victorious in the battle of the Milvian Bridge, and he continued to wear the symbol for Christ against every hostile power he faced

At around 350 AD, the Schola Cantorum (singing school) was founded This was an idea picked up from the Jewish synagogues where the

Levittes had special training and took on the role of temple musicians

St Augustine of Hippo 354-430 AD, was a very influential and great philosopher/theologian Saint Augustine is one of the most important of the Latin Church Fathers His works, especially his De Musica,

Confessions and City of God, helped distinguish the Church in Western Europe from the Church as it developed elsewhere He decreed that music should not be too tuneful and that there should be no

metre/rhythm, which led to church leaders being beset by fears of

musical pleasures and thus continuing the ideas of the Greek

Philosophers “I wept at the beauty of your hymns and the canticles…the sounds poured into my ears and the truth distilled in my heart”-from Confessions This encapsulates the feeling and mood of the church at this time – that the ‘bad’ feelings produced by the music had to be distilled

A preference for sacred vocal music was developed and pagan secular music and instruments were rejected Instruments were not appropriate

because of the links with pagan rituals and Roman arenas Ambrose, Bishop of Milan introduced hymn singing The hymn, St Ambrosia, is a tuneful/ornate link with secular music

Justinian I was crowned in 527 Up until this time pagan rituals, statues and temples still existed Justinian decreed that the studying of all pagan beliefs should be outlawed Latin was firmly established as the language

of the church

Also around this time St Benedict founded the Benedictine Rule at Monte Casino Monasteries were established all over Europe and the Benedictines become very powerful and influential people

The leaders of the Church decided to organise and codify the thousands

of pieces of music used in worship Gregory I, Pope from 590 to 604, is usually given the credit for getting the effort started

Codified all the church chants (Antiphonar) and set course to make the Roman Rite pre-eminent across western Europe using Gregorian Chant, the Mass and the Daily (monastic) Office as it’s base Legend has it that

a Dove from God sat on Gregory’s shoulder and whispered the chants to him He founded the Schola Cantorum in Rome

He produced sacramentary rubrics (red rules), that brought together all the ideas and formalised the ‘order of services’, Gregory used the first Canon of Euchology, standardised the chants and started to make use of the Schola Cantorums He sent emissaries all over Europe to teach the Roman style and was responsible (mainly by his promotion by the Franks

300 yrs later through the reign of Charlemagne 768 – 814) for

standardisation of Masses all over Europe 768 – 814

While some sources suggest that he composed many of the melodies, there is little to authenticate this Nevertheless, this music grew to be called "Gregorian Chant" in his honour

Prior to around the year 1000 AD, virtually all music, Western music included, consisted of one dominant, unaccompanied melody line This texture, called monophonic still dominates much non-western music today, including Far Eastern, Indian, and Arabic cultures at least those that haven't become corrupted by Western practices yet!

Gregorian chant, sometimes known as "plainchant" consists solely of a melody, sung unaccompanied in Latin, with very free rhythms It is one

of the few types of music in Western civilisation without a feeling of meter Gregorian chant conveys a disembodied, ethereal, spiritual sound, certainly not focusing on anything that might inspire physical pleasure These chants made use of scales other than the major and minor ones familiar to us Instead they used the different "modes" such as Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, etc

Starting around the year 1000, the practice of using polyphony began to enter into Western music Polyphony is the use of independent lines within a piece of music This multi-layered texture gave music a new expressive intensity, almost literally giving it another dimension Perhaps not a coincidence, the use of perspective in painting was evolving at about the same time, expressing a parallel expansion in the visual

medium The first polyphony (called 'organum') consisted of two voices moving in parallel motion Later as harmony became a little more

sophisticated, the voices began taking on a little more independence from each other

Considering all these factors it is not really surprising that the vast majority of music that survives from the Middle Ages is sacred music There are a couple of reasons for this

Firstly, the key word in the above statement is survives In European civilisation following the collapse of the Roman empire, literacy fell to

an all time low during the Middle Ages Even though modern scholars are revising their opinions of culture in the Medieval times upward, the average peasant simply couldn't read or write That special talent was passed along by the church through its religious orders

This included the special talents of reading and writing music And of course, the monks whose duty it was to notate and copy music would have a tremendous bias toward the sacred music

A second reason is that there really was a great deal of sacred music composed Again, it was considered the highest form of art to be able to use one's talent to praise God Life had become more and more

dangerous and uncertain for the inhabitant of the Middle Ages Without science to illuminate physical laws, without bacteriology to allow the understanding of diseases and plagues, fear and superstition became the method of explaining the unknown Our earthly existence was ultimately looked upon as a dangerous, misery filled prelude to a blissful afterlife The Church represented the hopes of the better world to come

Sacred music of the Middle Ages centred around two primary areas, the Office and the Mass Virtually all sacred music at that time was sung in Latin

Monks were expected to sing, pray, and read the scripture eight times during the day from Matins (just after midnight) to Vespers (just before the evening meal) and Compline (at dusk) These times were known as the Hours of the Divine Office

The most important musical event in the Roman Catholic Liturgy was the Mass Wrapped around the sacrament of Holy Communion, the Mass consisted of two parts called the Ordinary, and the Proper

The Proper of the Mass was the part that changed from day to day, as the

readings were geared for specific feast days and occasions The Ordinary

of the Mass was the text that remained consistent throughout the church year The five parts of the Ordinary were the ones most commonly set to music in Medieval and later times

Below is a list of the parts of the Mass The parts of the Ordinary are in bold typeface

Introit

Kyrie

Gloria

Collects

Epistle

Gradual

Alleluia (or Tract in certain seasons)

Gospel

Credo

Offertory

Preface

Sanctus/Benedictus

Canon

Lord's Prayer

Agnus Dei

Communion

Post Communion prayers

Ite Missa Est

In addition to the regular Mass, a Requiem Mass was a common liturgy Meaning "rest", the Requiem Mass was the "Mass for the Dead", used at funerals

The earliest settings of this music were strictly monophonic Through the Middle Ages, polyphony became an important stylistic element in music Not surprisingly, the greatest composers of the time put their best

energies into the mass "Missa Notre Dame" by Guillaume de Machaut

represented the first polyphonic ordinary done by a single composer Leonin, Perotin, Dufay, and Machaut were the leading composers of the earliest sacred polyphonic music Many other leading composers of the Middle Ages remain anonymous this was not yet an age of musical personalities

Guido D'Arezzo, a monk who lived in the early 11th century devised a version of the staff that is the precursor of today's staff Some of his practices also contributed to "sight-singing" the reading of music at sight He also started the practice of using the Latin syllables of Do, Re,

Mi, Fa, etc to symbolise pitches

Travelling minstrel singers, often known as troubadours, trouveres, and minnesingers, were the secular musicians Generally their music was a monophonic line which they accompanied on the lute or harp, probably using one of the Church modes These poet/musicians sang of nature, of love, of knightly legends, and of the sense of the mystical that pervaded their lives Mysticism and superstition were the only tools available to explain the stars, the seasons, the randomness of weather patterns, diseases, etc. and these tools played a great part in the lives of Medieval citizens as they struggled to understand the world around them

Common types of secular music were the Rondeau, Virelai, the Frottola (many of which today we would simply lump under the heading

"ballad"), and the motet Coming from the French "mot" meaning 'word', the motet often had several lines of music and text, sung in different languages Often the different melodies were on completely different subjects, occasionally pairing a sacred text with a very bawdy one!