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Proyecto Bilingüe – 2º ESO
Unit 1: Middle Ages
Index:
1. Religious vocal Music: Gregorian Chant
2. Secular vocal music: troubadours and trouveres.
3. Spanish Medieval music
4. The birth of polyphony
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Basic vocabulary
Courtly Love: amor cortés.
Crowds: multitud.
Crusades: cruzadas.
Dreary: deprimente.
Fairs: ferias.
Feudal lords: señores feudales.
Huge: grande.
Hunger: hambruna.
Jongleurs: juglares.
Knights: caballeros.
Mass: misa.
Middle Ages: Edad Media.
Muddy: embarrado.
Neumes: neumas.
Religious worship: culto religioso.
Square notation: notación cuadrada.
Storytelling: narración.
Strengthening: fortalecimiento.
Theocentrism: teocentrismo.
Wedding: boda.
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Medieval music was an integral part of everyday life for the people of that
time period. Music of the Middle Ages was especially popular during times of
celebration and festivities in convents and cathedrals as well as castles and palaces.
1. Religious vocal Music: Gregorian Chant
Religious music in the Middle
Ages began to grow long before
the emperor Constantine granted
freedom of religious worship for
Christians in the year 313. Since
then,
Christianism
began
to
expand and organize its liturgy, in
which singing was an essential
element. The main driving force
of
this
task
expansion
and
unification of the liturgy was Pope Gregory the Great (590-604). Considered by
tradition as the creator of the Christian singing, he actually did not invent it. He
encouraged its organization as a way of strengthening the feeling of Christian
unity.
Gregorian chant is a form of monophonic religious music in Western
Christianity that accompanied the celebration of Mass and the hours of Office.
This vast repertoire of chants is the oldest music known. In the beginning the
chants were learnt by the viva voce method. Later, in the 10th century, the first
written repertoire appeared. The earliest notation used symbols called neumes:
symbols that approximately reflect the pitch and duration of sound and whose
writing derived from the movement of the hand when conducting the singing. By
the 13th century, the neumes of Gregorian chant were usually written in square
notation on a four-line staff with a clef.
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Neumas and square notation
Gregorian chant is, of course, vocal music. The relationship between text
and music can be "syllabic" if there´s one syllable per sound; "neumatic" if there’s a
group of notes per syllable and “melismatic” if there are five or six notes per
syllable to over sixty in the largest melismas.
Syllabic chant:
Neumatic chant:
Melismatic chant:
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Chant is written in Latin and was normally sung in unison without
instruments (a capella) so its texture is monophonic. There isn’t a beat or regular
metric accent which doesn’t mean absence of rhythm: the text determines the
accent while the melody determines the phrasing.
Remember…

Religious text written in Latin.

Monophonic texture.

There isn´t a beat or regular metric accent.

Vocal music without instruments.

Anonymous composers.
2. Secular vocal music: troubadours and trouveres
Secular
vocal
music
was
developed at the same time as
religious music under the protection
of feudal lords. Troubadour is the
generic term for poets and minstrels
who flourished in southern France
and in Northern Italy from the 11th
through the 13th centuries. Called
trouveres in northern France and
meistersingers in Germany, these
artists converted storytelling into an art, and often entertained huge crowds at
fairs, weddings and other medieval celebrations. Normally they used new musical
instruments, brought back to Western Europe from the Crusades, and their songs
were written in the vernacular languages of each area. It is a type of vocal music
with monophonic texture, with instrumental accompaniment and, due to its
popular character, its rhythm is more marked.
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Medieval times often evoke images of knights battling on muddy fields,
dark and dreary castles, hunger and wars… but these Dark Ages also saw the birth
of a romantic movement. French lords were poets and musicians and they wrote
epic love poems about Courtly Love. Jongleurs were professional singers who
performed these compositions from town to town.
3. Spanish Medieval music
One of the jewels of the Spanish secular
medieval music is a huge collection of the Cantigas
of Alfonso the X “The Wise” (1221-1284).
It´s known that the King wasn´t the only
organizer of the collection however he was the
composer of some of them. There are many
pictures where we can find a lot of information
about the daily life of the medieval society, the mix
of the three cultures and the instruments. A cantiga
is a poetry and musical composition about the
miracles of Mother Mary. Even though the texts are
religious we consider these compositions secular
music. The musical form alternates between stanzas
and the chorus.
Only instruments were used in secular music in the Middle Ages. The main
string instruments were lute, harp and viola. In the woodwind we find the
recorders, “chirimías” (like a oboe), bagpipes and trumpets. The percussion family
was enormous and had a lot of variety.
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4. The birth of polyphony
In the late 9th century, polyphony (different melodic lines at the same time)
appeared in Western Music. This fact marked the posterior development of music,
and probably appeared spontaneously with the desire of decorating and enriching
the Gregorian chant.
 Primitive polyphony (9th – 12th centuries)
Polyphony is built by improvising upon the base of Gregorian chant. The main
forms of primitive polyphony are:

Organum: it is the oldest and most rudimentary. It appeared in th late 9th
century and consisted of adding a parallel voice of 4 th or 5th below the
Gregorian chant. The original Gregorian melody receives the name vox
principalis, and the one that is added, vox organalis. In the melismatic
organum, the Gregorian melody is developed in long values over wich the
vox organalis sings long melismas.
 Ars antique (12th – 13th centuries)
The evolution of musical notation made the development of more complex
polyphonic forms easier. Music abandoned the Gregorian free rhythm and began
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to measure it due to the need of synchronizing the different voices of the
polyphony.
In order to measure the durations of sound, musicians had to resort to the old
Greek rhythm by using their main metrical feet.
The most important musical centre of this period was the so called “Notre
Dame School” in Paris. And its main composers were Leonin (1150 – 1180) and
Perotin (1183 – 1238).
New polyphonic forms appeared, like the motet, with several voices that move
in different rhythms singing different texts.
 Ars Nova (14th century)
Polyphony started liberating itself from the Gregorian chant in order to find a
type of music closer to humanity, typical of an era that underwent the birth of
urban societies and grew apart from medieval theocentrism.
Secular music became increasingly important, making room for polyphonic
forms of songs like the canon, the ballad and the chanson.
The most important composers were Philippe de Vitry (1291 – 1361), Guillaume
de Machaut (1300 – 1377) and Francesco Landini (1335 – 1397).
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World music: Arabic Music
The category of Arabic music includes music from North Africa to Iran, on
to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, etc. The music differs quite a bit between one
country and the next, but Egypt always provides a good reference for Arabic music.
In Spain we can hear reminisces of Arabic music even today thanks to flamenco
music.
Today, Arabic music has acquired different influences from western music,
like the instrumentation (violins, saxophones, and electric instruments like the
electric guitar and the synthesizer.)
The main characteristics of Arabic music are:
-Heterophony: The term used to describe music that has two very similar
melodies that share many of the same notes, but one melody ornaments the other.
This is a special shadow melody.
-Improvisation: Improvisation is always present in the creation of each piece. The
beauty of the performance of improvisation consists of the improvised
embellishments.
-Ornamentation: is an element based on the Arabic sound.
Without
ornamentation, the compositions lose their characteristic sound, or sense.
Arabic music is based on styles of melody and rhythm.

Melodic pattern: Arabic music uses a different scale than we do. In their
scales, they use very small intervals, like quarter steps (as opposed to half
steps). This is one of the most important characteristics of Arabic music.
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
Rhythmic Pattern: The same rhythmical pattern is used during the
performance, but different instruments ornament the pattern. However, the
basic pattern can always be identified easily.
Curiosities…
Arabs entered Spain around the 7th century and stayed for 8 centuries, until
1492. During these centuries, the Muslims lived together with the Christians and
Jews. We call this time “Spain of the three cultures.” The music of this mixture is
called andalusí music.
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