Medieval music
This time period is around 500-1400 thats is 900 years!
Medieval music was mostly church music, but it has been experimented and changed over the 900 years. Medieval music uses a Latin language with Gregorian chant.
Types of music
There are 3 types of music, but we will only talk about two, Sacred and Secular
- Sacred- the music belongs to the church
- Secular- music that does not belong to the church
- Instrumental- only played by instruments no singing
Let’s start with sacred music, sacred music is mostly sung by churches, wanted to stick with traditional ways. Sacred music doesn’t use instruments, only vocal. There are two types of vocal, monophony and polyphony. Monophony is only sung in one melody, meanwhile polyphony is sung in two or more melodies, hence the name mono means one and poly means more than one. The church uses the most oldest sheet music called nuemes, it looks like notes but it is in a more blocky shape and difficult to read.
Now it’s secular music, secular music is mostly sung by Troubadours and the Trouvères which are traveling performers. It used more polyphony and it was more upbeat than sacred music. And it is used with instruments unlike sacred music. The instruments used back the were like the grandparents of the instruments we used today, I will name some.
- Medieval flute
- Viol
- Lyra
- Harp
- Dulcimer
- Bagpipes
- Drums
In secular music they had this thing called Ars Nova (“new art”) it was in 14 century France and Italy and it increased variety of rhythm and independence of parts. A man named Guillamue de Machaut (1300-1377) was the most important composers from the Ars Nova, he was a Roman Catholic Priest and musician, he composed the song Messe De Norte Dame ( Mass of our lady). The mass viewers the entire Mass Ordinary as a whole unit rather than separate compositions, the song was a 4 part polyphonic setting, which means 4 separate vocal parts were needed.
Sheet music of the song Messe De Norte Dame
