Download Middle Ages / Medieval Music (500-1400) … the time in European

Middle Ages / Medieval Music (500-1400)
… the time in European history between classical antiquity and the Italian Renaissance (from about 500
a.d. to about 1350): sometimes restricted to the later part of this period (after 1100) and sometimes
extended to 1450 or 1500.
… the period in European history between antiquity and the Renaissance, often dated from A.D. 476 to
1453
Adj. Medieval = medi(um) aev(um) “the middle age”
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Liturgy: A particular order or form of public service laid down by a Church
Liturgical Year: also known as the Christian year, consists of the cycle of liturgical seasons which
determines feasts, memorials, commemorations are to be observed and which portions of Scripture are
to be read.
Music and the Liturgy
1. Divine Offices or Canonical Hours (not office hours! )
2. Mass
Divine Offices or Canonical Hours
Matins (before daybreak)
Lauds (at sunrise)
Prime (6 a.m.)
Terce (9 a.m.)
*Mass
Sext (Noon)
None (3 p.m.)
Vespers (sunset)
Compline
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Mass
Ordinary: Those texted parts of the Mass that are repeated at each service.
Proper: Those texted parts of the Mass that change to suit a particular day in the liturgical year
(i.e., Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, etc.)
Ordinary of the Mass
Kyrie
A: Kyrie eleison
B: Christe eleison
A: Kyrie eleison
Gloria
Credo
Sanctus
A: Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus…
B: Pleni sunt caeli et terra…
B’: Benedictus qui venit…
Agnus Dei
A: Agnus Dei…miserere nobis
A’: Agnus Dei…miserere nobis
A: Agnus Dei…dona nobis pacem
Ite, missa est
Example: Kyrie and Gloria (plainchant) [NAWM 3b-c, CD1/8-12]
Classifying Chant
1. Text
2. Manner of Performance
3. Style
1. Text:
Biblical
Non-Biblical
2. Manner of Performance
a) Direct – one choir
b) Antiphonal – two choirs
c) Responsorial – soloist & choir
3. Style:
1. Syllabic – one note per syllable
2. Neumatic – several notes per syllable
3. Melismatic – many notes per syllable
Example: Tecum principium (Psalm) [CD 1/24-27]
Text:
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Biblical & Poetic
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Antiphonal– two choirs
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Primarily syllabic
Recitation Formulas
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Tenor (Tenere = “to hold” or “to sustain”)
Psalm Tones
Initium
Tenor
Mediatio
Tenor
Terminatio
Expansion and Additions to the Liturgy
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Tropes
Sequences
Musical form of the Sequence:
α … AA‘ BB‘ CC' … 
Example: Wipo of Burgundy (ca. 995-ca. 1050), Victimae paschali laudes [NAWM
Secular Song
Jongleurs: A medieval entertainer, sometimes a minstrel. The term covers a range of
entertainers and story-tellers.
Troubadours, Trouvères: Lyric poets or poet-musicians of France in the 12th and 13th centuries.
Poets working the south of France, writing in Provençal, are generally termed troubadours;
those of the north, writing in French, are called trouvères.
Example: Beatriz de Dia, “A chantar” (late 12th century)
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Strophic song — a song in which all stanzas of poetry are sung to the same music
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Ends with a tornada, a brief two-line ending
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Monophonic but accompanied by a vielle