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CHAPTER 1
1. Describe the role of music in ancient Greek society. How would you characterize Greek
attitudes about music? What aspects of Greek musical thought have influenced Western
music history?
The ancient Greeks treated music as an important and influential art, which is reflected both in
the attention it received from the eminent philosophers of the day, and in its use in the chorus as
a critical tool in the Greek drama. Greek musical thought was most influential in its harmonic
formulations, as the Pythagorean system became the backbone of music theory for hundreds of
years.
2. What topics are addressed in Boethius’s De institutione musica? How does it reflect
ancient Greek and medieval understandings of music?
Boethius concerns himself with what he terms musica, and what might today be understood as
“harmony”: the abstract and theoretical nature of music itself. Largely a sum of translations, De
institutione musica reflects earlier Greek and medieval thought in its hierarchical description of
musical spheres, in which practical, heard music (musica instrumentalis) is merely the audible
expression of the same musical processes involved in the human constitution (musica humana)
and the procession of the stars (musica mundana).
3. What political circumstances led to the adoption of Roman chant in the Frankish
kingdom? Why was the chant attributed to Gregory the Great?
The desire of the Carolingian emperors to centralize and hegemonize their enormous panEuropean empire meant that a single chant was a political necessity; and since the Bishop of
Rome had, over the last several centuries, become the most powerful and stable leader in the
Catholic world, the choice of Roman chant over its Mozarabic, Coptic, or Ambrosian
contemporaries was one of political expediency. Its attribution to Gregory the Great was part of a
propaganda campaign, which relied upon the Pope’s personal prestige (and the rumor that he was
the recipient of divine revelation in this regard) to buttress the new chant’s standing and make it
more readily acceptable to Germanic and Frankish Catholics.
4. Compare and contrast the four different settings of the text Justus ut palma discussed in
this chapter. What are their main stylistic and formal features, and how might they have
been used in context?
The first setting of Justus ut palma discussed is part of the Office, an antiphon consisting of a
single, simple melodic line, syllabically declaimed. This melody proceeds from its beginning
intonation pitch to the reciting tone, a held pitch upon which lengthy portions of text are usually
declaimed. The second setting of Justus ut palma mentioned is part of the Mass Proper, and
owing to its more exalted position (the beginning of the Offertory), it is accordingly more
elaborate and melismatic. The next setting described is what is termed a “lesson chant,” a chant
sung in responsory fashion between scriptural readings. It is the most elaborate of the Mass
chants, ornately florid and almost entirely melismatic. The final setting of Justus ut palma
discussed is again part of the Mass Proper, specifically the Easter Gradual Haec dies; and like
many Graduals, it bears certain formulaic traits which point toward an oral composition.
5. What do the earliest notations show about a chant melody, and what knowledge must the
singer have in order to use the notation?
The earliest chant notation was not illustrative enough to enable a singer to sight-read the tune: It
describes vocal inflection and the general pitch-shape, but little else. A singer of such notation
would need to be familiar with the notation’s basic structure, which is founded upon phonetics,
but also would need to have some previous familiarity with the music in question in order to
perform.
6. Explain the contributions of Guido of Arezzo to music theory and pedagogy, including
solmization, the hexachord, and his theory of organum.
Guido of Arezzo is notable for making one of the first theoretical contributions to practical
music-making: Many of his contributions grew out of his direct experience training choristers.
Solmization, the practice of reciting pitches on syllables abstracted from fixed pitch, was his
invention, one he devised out of study of the hymn Ut queant laxis. This hymn focuses each halfline of its text on pitches of progressively higher scale degree, outlining the six-note set, or
hexachord, which was the basis of Guido’s system. This system lacks our syllable ti: Guido
instead relied upon a system of mutation, in which a given pitch is reinterpreted while singing, to
bridge the gap which our ti fills between la and the octave do. Guido’s Micrologus, a pedagogic
text of great influence, provided singers with an array of solutions to contrapuntal problems
(such as devising a good occursus, cleverly avoiding the tritone, and providing a good
complement of intervals).
7. Focusing on the Ordinary, briefly describe the origins, text, and music for the chants of
the Mass. How did each one fit into the liturgy?
The Catholic Mass is a reenactment of Christ’s last supper (or seder), divided into the synaxis,
which is an inclusive service focused upon open prayer and readings, and the Eucharist, the
consumption of bread and wine which are held to miraculously transform (or “transubstantiate”)
into the body and blood of Christ. The text of the Mass Ordinary, that portion which does not
change from day to day, is divided into the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei. The
Kyrie, which uses a simple Greek text, alternates between recitations of “Kyrie eleison” and
“Christe eleison,” and often reflects this structure in its form: AAA BBB AAA’, or AAA BBB
CCC’. The Gloria’s text is based upon the angelic appearance before the shepherds during
Christ’s birth recounted in the Gospel of Luke. This lengthy text is more syllabic than melismatic
as a necessity, as it must navigate over a hundred words to the Kyrie’s three, and this difficult
passage was therefore initially reserved for the clerical choir. This is followed by the similarly
prolix (but musically more austere) Credo, which is a statement of the tenets of the Christian
faith (“I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth…”). The Sanctus
takes its text from the Book of Isaiah, and like the Gloria is held in reserve for the church
choristers. The Mass Ordinary ends with the Agnus Dei, which is structured both musically and
textually like the opening Kyrie: It uses an ABA structure which repeats minimally variable
words.
8. Describe the new types of composition that arose between the ninth and eleventh
centuries, including the trope, sequence, hymn, and Marian antiphon. What are the main
characteristics of these genres, and how did they originate?
Tropes began as improvisatory additions to existing chants, and grew from mere prefaces to
more elaborate introductions to the Mass as a whole. They served as more individualized
additions, since their text was freely chosen, to the often unchanging Mass service. The hymn, in
contrast, is a complete composition without attachment, one which is vividly melodic, wellornamented, and evocative of a jubilant mood when compared to the staid psalm. The Marian
antiphon, too, was an independent work, a Latin song which appears at the end of the Offertory
and offered praise specifically to the Virgin Mary. Finally, the sequence is a double versicle
chant of Frankish origin, born of the extremely long melisma which was originally appended to
the “Alleluia.”
9. How did the sequences composed by Hildegard von Bingen compare with other medieval
sequences? In what other areas of musical and religious life was Hildegard active?
Hildegard’s sequences seem to focus more upon variation than repetition, and their text is
focused upon divine revelation, of which Hildegard believed herself a recipient. Hildegard’s
sequences are not her only musical accomplishment; her morality play Ordo virtutum is indeed
perhaps her most famous work. Beyond her abilities as a musician and composer, Hildegard
wrote extensively on the natural sciences and of her own revelatory experiences.
10. Explain at least two approaches to making polyphony. How was this taught in the
Musica and Scolica enchiriadis? How did this practice change in the next two centuries?
One approach to making polyphony involves accompanying an extant melody with a drone,
usually on the final of the mode. The other uses a transposition of the existing melody to a
consonant interval below, which is termed “organum.” The Enchiriadis treaties suggest a
combination of these methods in the creation of polyphony: While the added voice must follow
the existing one in a loose sense, it does so in a broad fashion, changing pitches with much less
frequency and instead contributing a succession of drones on different pitches. With the ascent of
new musical ideas codified in Guido’s Micrologus, the number of pitches available to the added
voice increased dramatically.
11. Most of the music studied in this chapter falls on a spectrum between being oral and
fully literate. In what ways did oral tradition persist after writing began? How do our
assumptions about art and what constitutes a “piece” of music differ from those of the
Middle Ages?
The existence of fifteenth-century manuscripts without heightened neumes is concrete evidence
that oral transmission continued even after fully literate notation was available, because
unheightened neumes are not indicative enough to transmit music without accompanying oral
education. Oral expression of sung music is easy, easier to transmit than its written counterpart,
and thus will always exist as a viable counterpart, a fact well attested by the rote teaching of
popular and folk songs that still occurs today.
Our society has had its aesthetic sense molded by the increasing ease with which technological
reproduction of music has embedded itself in our world. For this reason, the Middle Ages saw
music as essentially potential, while the Modern mind tends to view music as essentially
realized.