The only medieval music which can be studied is that which was written down, and survived. Since creating musical manuscripts was very expensive, due to the expense of parchment, and the huge amount of time necessary for a scribe to copy it all down, only wealthy institutions were able to create manuscripts which have survived to the present time. These institutions generally included the church and church institutions, such as monasteries; some secular music, as well as sacred music, was also preserved by these institutions. These surviving manuscripts do not reflect much of the popular music of the time. At the start of the era, the notated music is presumed to be monophonic and homorhythmic with what appears to be a unison sung text and no notated instrumental support. Earlier medieval notation had no way to specify rhythm, although neumatic notations gave clear phrasing ideas, and somewhat later notations indicated rhythmic modes.
The simplicity of chant, with unison voice and natural declamation, is most common. The notation of polyphony develops, and the assumption is that formalized polyphonic practices first arose in this period. Harmony, in consonant intervals of perfect fifths, unisons, octaves, (and later, perfect fourths) begins to be notated. Rhythmic notation allows for complex interactions between multiple vocal lines in a repeatable fashion. The use of multiple texts and the notation of instrumental accompaniment developed by the end of the era.
The instruments used to perform medieval music still exist, though in different forms. The medieval cornett differed immensely from its modern counterpart, the trumpet, not least in traditionally being made of ivory or wood rather than metal. Cornetts in medieval times were quite short. They were either straight or somewhat curved, and construction became standardized on a curved version by approximately the middle 15th century. In one side, there would be several holes. The flute was once made of wood rather than silver or other metal, and could be made as a side-blown or end-blown instrument. The recorder, on the other hand, has more or less retained its past form. The gemshorn is similar to the recorder in having finger holes on its front, though it is really a member of the ocarina family. One of the flute's predecessors, the pan flute, was popular in medieval times, and is possibly of Hellenic origin. This instrument's pipes were made of wood, and were graduated in length to produce different pitches.
Many medieval plucked string instruments were similar to the modern guitar, such as the lute and mandolin. The hammered dulcimer, similar in structure to the psaltery and zither, was not plucked but struck. The hurdy-gurdy was (and still is) a mechanical violin using a rosined wooden wheel attached to a crank to "bow" its strings. Instruments without sound boxes such as the Jew's harp were also popular. Early versions of the organ, fiddle (or vielle), and trombone (called the sackbut) existed as well.
Early chant traditions
Chant (or plainsong) is a monophonic sacred form which represents the earliest known music of the Christian church. The Jewish Synagogue tradition of singing psalms was a strong influence on Christian chanting.
Chant developed separately in several European centres. The most important were Rome, Spain, Gaul, Milan, and Ireland. These chants were all developed to support the regional liturgies used when celebrating the Mass there. Each area developed its own chants and rules for celebration. In Spain, Mozarabic chant was used and shows the influence of North African music. The Mozarabic liturgy even survived through Muslim rule, though this was an isolated strand and this music was later suppressed in an attempt to enforce conformity on the entire liturgy. In Milan, Ambrosian chant, named after St. Ambrose, was the standard, while Beneventan chant developed around Benevento, another Italian liturgical center. Gallican chant was used in Gaul, and Celtic chant in Ireland and Great Britain.
Around 1011 AD, the Roman Catholic Church wanted to standardize the Mass and chant. At this time, Rome was the religious centre of western Europe, and Paris was the political centre. The standardization effort consisted mainly of combining these two (Roman and Gallican) regional liturgies. This body of chant became known as Gregorian Chant. By the 12th and 13th centuries, Gregorian chant had superseded all the other Western chant traditions, with the exception of the Ambrosian chant in Milan, and the Mozarabic chant in a few specially designated Spanish chapels.
Troubadours and trouvères
The music of the troubadours and trouvères was a vernacular tradition of monophonic secular song, probably accompanied by instruments, sung by professional, occasionally itinerant, musicians who were as skilled as poets as they were singers and instrumentalists. The language of the troubadours was Occitan (also known as the langue d'oc, or Provençal); the language of the trouvères was Old French (also known as langue d'oil). The period of the troubadours corresponded to the flowering of cultural life in Provence which lasted through the twelfth century and into the first decade of the thirteenth. Typical subjects of troubadour song were war, chivalry and courtly love. The period of the troubadours ended abruptly with the Albigensian Crusade, the fierce campaign by Pope Innocent III to eliminate the Cathar heresy (and northern barons' desire to appropriate the wealth of the south). Surviving troubadours went either to Spain, northern Italy or northern France (where the trouvère tradition lived on), where their skills and techniques contributed to the later developments of secular musical culture in those places.
The music of the trouvères was similar to that of the troubadours, but was able to survive into the thirteenth century unaffected by the Albigensian Crusade. Most of the more than two thousand surviving trouvère songs include music, and show a sophistication as great as that of the poetry it accompanies.
The Minnesinger tradition was the Germanic counterpart to the activity of the troubadours and trouvères to the west. Unfortunately, few sources survive from the time; the sources of Minnesang are mostly from two or three centuries after the peak of the movement, leading to some controversy over their accuracy.
Transitioning to the Renaissance
Demarcating the end of the medieval era and the beginning of the Renaissance, with regards to the composition of music, is problematic. While the music of the fourteenth century is fairly obviously medieval in conception, the music of the early fifteenth century is often conceived as belonging to a transitional period, not only retaining some of the ideals of the end of the Middle Ages (such as a type of polyphonic writing in which the parts differ widely from each other in character, as each has its specific textural function), but also showing some of the characteristic traits of the Renaissance (such as the international style developing through the diffusion of Franco-Flemish musicians throughout Europe, and in terms of texture an increasing equality of parts). The Renaissance began early in Italy, but musical innovation there lagged far behind that of France and England; the Renaissance came late to England, but musical innovation there was ahead of continental Europe.
Music historians do not agree on when the Renaissance era began, but most historians agree that England was still a medieval society in the early fifteenth century (see a discussion of periodization issues of the Middle Ages). While there is no consensus, 1400 is a useful marker, because it was around that time that the Renaissance came into full swing in Italy.
The increasing reliance on the interval of the third as a consonance is one of the most pronounced features of transition into the Renaissance. Polyphony, in use since the 12th century, became increasingly elaborate with highly independent voices throughout the 14th century. With John Dunstaple and other English composers, partly through the local technique of faburden (an improvisatory process in which a chant melody and a written part predominantly in parallel sixths above it are ornamented by one sung in perfect fourths below the latter, and which later took hold on the continent as "fauxbordon"), the interval of the third emerges as an important musical development; because of this Contenance Angloise ("English countenance"), English composers' music is often regarded as the first to sound less truly bizarre to modern, unschooled audiences. English stylistic tendencies in this regard had come to fruition and began to influence continental composers as early as the 1420s, as can be seen in works of the young Dufay, among others. While the Hundred Years' War continued, English nobles, armies, their chapels and retinues, and therefore some of their composers, travelled in France and performed their music there; it must also of course be remembered that the English controlled portions of northern France at this time
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, And his name shall be called wonderful counsellor The mighty God, the everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. - Isaiah - Chapter 9
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