4501450 Historical Background Because of the domination of the early Catholic Church during this period sacred music was the most prevalent The Church was able to dictate the progress of arts and letters according to its own strictures and employed all the scribes musicians and artists ID: 340619
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Slide1
Music in the Middle Ages
(450-1450)Slide2
Historical Background
Because of the domination of the early Catholic Church during this period, sacred music was the most prevalent
.
The Church was able to dictate the progress of arts and letters according to its own strictures and employed all the scribes, musicians and artists. At this time, western music was almost the sole property of the Catholic Church
.Slide3
Historical Background
Beginning with Gregorian Chant, sacred music slowly developed into a polyphonic music called
organum
performed at Notre Dame in Paris by the twelfth century.
Secular music flourished, too, in the hands of the French
trouvères
and troubadours,
until the period culminated with the sacred and secular compositions of the first true genius of Western music, Guillaume de
Machaut
.Slide4
Gregorian Chant
The early Christian church derived their music from existing Jewish and Byzantine religious chant. Like all music in the Western world up to this time, plainchant was
monophonic.
The melodies are free in tempo and seem to wander melodically, dictated by the Latin liturgical texts to which they are set
.Slide5
Gregorian Chant
As these chants spread throughout Europe , they were embellished and developed along many different lines in various regions and according to various sects
.
Many
years later, composers of
Renaissance
polyphony very often used plainchant melodies as the basis for their sacred works.Slide6
Notre Dame and the Ars
Antiqua
Sometime during the
9
th
century
, music theorists in the Church began experimenting with the idea of singing two melodic lines simultaneously at parallel intervals, usually at the fourth, fifth, or octave. The resulting hollow-sounding music was called
organum
and very slowly developed over the next hundred years.
By the
11th
century, one, two (and much later, even three) added melodic lines were no longer moving in parallel motion, but contrary to each other, sometimes even crossing. Slide7
Notre Dame and the
Ars
Antiqua
This music thrived at the
Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris
during the
12
th
and 13th centuries, and much later became known as
the
Ars
Antiqua
, or the "old art." Slide8
Notre Dame and
Ars
Antiqua
The two composers at Notre Dame especially known for composing in this style are
Léonin
(fl. ca. 1163-1190),
who composed
organa
for two voices, and his successor
Pérotin
(fl. early13th century),
whose
organa included three and even four voices.
Pérotin’s
music is an excellent example of this very early form of
polyphony (music for two or more simultaneously sounding voices
).
This music was slowly supplanted by the smoother contours of the polyphonic music of the fourteenth century, which became known as the
Ars
Nova. Slide9
The
Trouvères
and the Troubadours
Popular music, usually in the form of secular songs, existed during the Middle Ages. This music was not bound by the traditions of the Church, nor was it even written down for the first time until sometime after the tenth century.
Hundreds of these songs were created and performed (and later notated) by bands of musicians flourishing across Europe during the 12th and 13th centuries, the most famous of which were the French
trouvères
and troubadours. Slide10
The
Trouvères
and the Troubadours
The monophonic melodies of these itinerant musicians, to which may have been added improvised accompaniments, were often rhythmically lively.
The subject of the overwhelming majority of these songs is love, in all its permutations of joy and pain. Slide11
Guillaume
de
Machaut
and
the
Ars
Nova
Born: Champagne region of France, ca. 1300
Died
: Rheims,
1377
Joined
the court of John, Duke of Luxembourg and King of Bohemia around 1323, serving as the king’s secretary until that monarch’s death in battle at
Crécy
in 1346.
the first composer to create a polyphonic setting of the
Ordinary of the Catholic Mass (the Ordinary being those parts of the liturgy that do not change, including the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and
Agnus
Dei). Slide12
Guillaume
de
Machaut
and
the
Ars
Nova
The new style of the fourteenth century, dubbed the
Ars
Nova by composers of the period, can be heard in the "Gloria" from
Machaut’s
Messe
de Notre Dame.
This new polyphonic style caught on with composers and paved the way for the flowering of choral music in the
Renaissance.Slide13
Machaut’s Secular Music
Machaut
also composed dozens of secular love songs, also in the style of the polyphonic "new art."
These songs epitomize the courtly love found in the previous century’s vocal art, and capture all the joy, hope, pain and heartbreak of courtly romance
.
The secular motets of the Middle Ages eventually evolved into the great outpouring of lovesick lyricism embodied in the music of the great Renaissance
Madrigalists.