Sacred Music Dominated the Early Middle Ages Art Music Because of Which ReasonS

Instruments

Gemshorn Alt

Instruments used to perform medieval music still be, merely in different forms. The flute was in one case fabricated of wood rather than silvery or other metal, and could be made every bit a side-diddled or end-blown instrument. The recorder has more or less retained its past grade. The gemshorn is like to the recorder in having finger holes on its front, though it is actually a member of the ocarina family. One of the flute's predecessors, the pan flute, was popular in medieval times, and is perchance of Hellenic origin. This instrument'south pipes were made of wood, and were graduated in length to produce unlike pitches.

Medieval music uses many plucked string instruments like the lute, mandore, gittern and psaltery. The dulcimers, similar in structure to the psaltery and zither, were originally plucked, but became struck in the fourteenth century after the arrival of the new technology that made metal strings possible.

Gittern

The bowed lyra of the Byzantine Empire was the get-go recorded European bowed string instrument. The Farsi geographer Ibn Khurradadhbih of the ninth century (d. 911) cited the Byzantine lyra, in his lexicographical discussion of instruments equally a bowed musical instrument equivalent to the Arab rabāb and typical instrument of the Byzantines along with the urghun (organ), shilyani (probably a type of harp or lyre) and the salandj (probably a bagpipe). The hurdy-gurdy was (and still is) a mechanical violin using a rosined wooden cycle attached to a crank to "bow" its strings. Instruments without sound boxes like the jaw harp were also popular in the fourth dimension. Early on versions of the organ, fiddle (or vielle), and trombone (called the sackbut) existed.

Genres

Medieval music was both sacred and secular. During the earlier medieval period, the liturgical genre, predominantly Gregorian dirge, was monophonic. Polyphonic genres began to develop during the loftier medieval era, becoming prevalent past the later thirteenth and early on fourteenth century. The evolution of such forms is often associated with the Ars nova.

The earliest innovations upon monophonic plainchant were heterophonic. The organum, for example, expanded upon plainchant melody using an accompanying line, sung at a fixed interval, with a resulting alternation between polyphony and monophony. The principles of the organum date back to an anonymous ninth century tract, the Musica enchiriadis, which established the tradition of duplicating a preexisting plainchant in parallel motion at the interval of an octave, a 5th or a fourth.

Of greater sophistication was the motet, which developed from the clausula genre of medieval plainchant and would get the most popular form of medieval polyphony. While early motets were liturgical or sacred, by the end of the thirteenth century the genre had expanded to include secular topics, such as ladylike love.

During the Renaissance, the Italian secular genre of the madrigal also became popular. Similar to the polyphonic character of the motet, madrigals featured greater fluidity and move in the leading line. The madrigal grade as well gave rise to canons, especially in Italian republic where they were equanimous nether the title Caccia. These were three-office secular pieces, which featured the two college voices in catechism, with an underlying instrumental long-note accessory.

Finally, purely instrumental music also adult during this menstruation, both in the context of a growing theatrical tradition and for courtroom consumption. Trip the light fantastic toe music, frequently improvised effectually familiar tropes, was the largest purely instrumental genre. The secular Ballata, which became very popular in Trecento Italian republic, had its origins, for instance, in medieval instrumental trip the light fantastic music.

Theory and Note

During the Medieval period the foundation was laid for the notational and theoretical practices that would shape western music into what it is today. The most obvious of these is the development of a comprehensive notational organisation; withal the theoretical advances, peculiarly in regard to rhythm and polyphony, are equally important to the development of western music.

Notation

The earliest Medieval music did not take any kind of notational organization. The tunes were primarily monophonic and transmitted by oral tradition. However, this class of notation only served as a retention assist for a singer who already knew the melody. As Rome tried to centralize the diverse liturgies and establish the Roman rite as the primary tradition the need to transmit these chant ideas beyond vast distances effectively was every bit glaring. The start step to ready this problem came with the introduction of various signs written to a higher place the chant texts, called neumes. The origin of neumes is unclear and subject to some contend; withal, most scholars agree that their closest ancestors are the classic Greek and Roman grammatical signs that indicated important points of declamation by recording the ascent and fall of the voice. The two basic signs of the classical grammarians were the acutus, /, indicating a raising of the voice, and the gravis, \, indicating a lowering. These eventually evolved into the bones symbols for neumatic notation, the virga (or "rod") which indicates a higher note and still looked like the acutus from which it came; and the punctum (or "dot") which indicates a lower notation and, as the name suggests, reduced the gravis symbol to a point. These the acutus and thegravis could be combined to stand for graphical vocal inflections on the syllable  This kind of notation seems to have developed no earlier than the eighth century, merely by the ninth it was firmly established equally the primary method of musical notation. The basic note of the virga and the punctum remained the symbols for private notes, merely other neumes shortly adult which showed several notes joined together. These new neumes—called ligatures—are essentially combinations of the two original signs.This bones neumatic notation could only specify the number of notes and whether they moved upwardly or down. There was no style to indicate exact pitch, any rhythm, or fifty-fifty the starting note. These limitations are farther indication that the neumes were developed as tools to support the practice of oral tradition, rather than to replace it. However, even though it started as a mere memory assistance, the worth of having more specific note soon became evident.

Beneventan music notation showing diastamatic neumes and a single-line staff. Montecassino, Italy, second half of 12th century.

The next development in musical notation was "heighted neumes," in which neumes were carefully placed at dissimilar heights in relation to each other. This allowed the neumes to give a rough indication of the size of a given interval equally well as the direction. This quickly led to i or two lines, each representing a particular annotation, being placed on the music with all of theneumes relating dorsum to them. At showtime, these lines had no particular meaning and instead had a alphabetic character placed at the starting time indicating which note was represented. Nonetheless, the lines indicating middle C and the F a fifth below slowly became most common. Having been at first merely scratched on the parchment, the lines now were drawn in two different colored inks: commonly red for F, and yellow or green for C. This was the beginning of the musical staff as we know it today. The completion of the four-line staff is usually credited to Guido d' Arezzo (c. 1000-1050), 1 of the virtually of import musical theorists of the Centre Ages. While older sources aspect the evolution of the staff to Guido, some modernistic scholars suggest that he acted more than as a codifier of a system that was already existence adult. Either way, this new notation allowed a singer to larn pieces completely unknown to him in a much shorter corporeality of time. However, fifty-fifty though chant notation had progressed in many ways, one key problem remained: rhythm. The neumatic notational system, even in its fully developed land, did not conspicuously define whatsoever kind of rhythm for the singing of notes.

Music Theory

The music theory of the Medieval period saw several advances over previous practice both in regard to tonal fabric, texture, and rhythm.

Rhythm

Cover from "Synónoma magistri," past Johannes de Garlandia, 1495.

Apropos rhythm, this flow had several dramatic changes in both its conception and annotation. During the early Medieval menstruation in that location was no method to notate rhythm, and thus the rhythmical practice of this early music is subject to heated contend amongst scholars. The starting time kind of written rhythmic system developed during the thirteenth century and was based on a serial of modes. This rhythmic programme was codified by the music theorist Johannes de Garlandia, author of the De Mensurabili Musica (c.1250), the treatise which defined and most completely elucidated these rhythmic modes. In his treatise Johannes de Garlandia describes 6 species of fashion, or half dozen different ways in which longs and breves can be arranged. Each fashion establishes a rhythmic pattern in beats (or tempora) within a common unit of measurement of three tempora (a perfectio) that is repeated again and once more. Furthermore, notation without text is based on bondage of fifty igaturedue south (the characteristic notations past which groups of notes are bound to ane some other). The rhythmic mode can generally be determined by the patterns of ligatures used. Once a rhythmic mode had been assigned to a melodic line, at that place was by and large picayune deviation from that style, although rhythmic adjustments could be indicated by changes in the expected blueprint of ligatures, fifty-fifty to the extent of changing to another rhythmic mode. The side by side step forward apropos rhythm came from the German language theorist Franco of Cologne. In his treatise Ars cantus mensurabilis ("The Art of Mensurable Music"), written effectually 1280, he describes a arrangement of notation in which differently shaped notes take entirely dissimilar rhythmic values. This is a hit alter from the before organization of de Garlandia. Whereas before the length of the individual note could just be gathered from the manner itself, this new inverted relationship fabricated the manner dependent upon—and determined past—the individual notes or figurae that have incontrovertible durational values, an innovation which had a massive impact on the subsequent history of European music. Most of the surviving notated music of the thirteenth century uses the rhythmic modes as defined by Garlandia. The step in the evolution of rhythm came subsequently the turn of the 13th century with the evolution of the Ars Nova manner.

The theorist who is well-nigh well recognized in regard to this new style is Philippe de Vitry, famous for writing the Ars Nova ("New Fine art") treatise around 1320. This treatise on music gave its proper name to the style of this entire era. In some ways the mod system of rhythmic notation began with Vitry, who completely bankrupt free from the older thought of the rhythmic modes. The notational predecessors of modern fourth dimension meters too originate in the Ars Nova. This new fashion was clearly built upon the work of Franco of Cologne. In Franco's system, the human relationship between a breve and a semibreves (that is, one-half breves) was equivalent to that between a breve and a long: and, since for him modus was always perfect (grouped in threes), the tempus or beat was also inherently perfect and therefore contained iii semibreves. Sometimes the context of the style would require a group of simply two semibreves, even so, these two semibreves would always be one of normal length and one of double length, thereby taking the same space of fourth dimension, and thus preserving the perfect subdivision of the tempus. This ternary division held for all notation values. In contrast, the Ars Nova period introduced ii important changes: the first was an even smaller subdivision of notes (semibreves, could now exist divided into minim), and the 2d was the evolution of "mensuration." Mensurations could exist combined in diverse manners to produce metrical groupings. These groupings of mensurations are the precursors of uncomplicated and compound meter. By the fourth dimension of Ars Nova, the perfect sectionalisation of the tempus was not the only option as duple divisions became more accepted. For Vitry the breve could be divided, for an entire limerick, or department of i, into groups of ii or three smaller semibreves. This way, the tempus (the term that came to denote the division of the breve) could exist either "perfect," (Tempus perfectus) with ternary subdivision, or "imperfect,"(Tempus imperfectus) with binary subdivision. In a similar mode, the semibreve's division (termed prolation) could exist divided into three minima (prolatio perfectus or major prolation) or two minima (prolatio imperfectus or pocket-sized prolation) and, at the college level, the longs sectionalization (called modus) could be 3 or two breves (modus perfectus or perfect mode, or modus imperfectus or imperfect mode respectively). Vitry took this a step farther by indicating the proper division of a given piece at the first through the use of a "mensuration sign," equivalent to our modern "fourth dimension signature. Tempus perfectus was indicated by a circle, while tempus imperfectus was denoted by a half-circle (our current "C" equally a stand-in for the four/4 time signature is actually a holdover from this practice, not an abridgement for "common time", as popularly believed). While many of these innovations are ascribed to Vitry, and somewhat present in the Ars Nova treatise, information technology was a gimmicky—and personal acquaintance—of de Vitry, named Johannes de Muris (Jehan des Mars) who offered the virtually comprehensive and systematic treatment of the new mensural innovations of the Ars Nova. Many scholars, citing a lack of positive attributory evidence, now consider "Vitry's" treatise to be anonymous, but this does non diminish its importance for the history of rhythmic notation. However, this makes the first definitely identifiable scholar to take and explain the mensural system to be de Muris, who can exist said to have done for it what Garlandia did for the rhythmic modes.

For the duration of the medieval period, about music would be composed primarily in perfect tempus, with special furnishings created past sections of imperfect tempus; there is a great current controversy amid musicologists equally to whether such sections were performed with a breve of equal length or whether it changed, and if so, at what proportion. This Ars Nova style remained the primary rhythmical organisation until the highly syncopated works of the Ars subtilior at the finish of the 14th century, characterized by extremes of notational and rhythmic complexity. This sub-genera pushed the rhythmic freedom provided past Ars Nova to its limits, with some compositions having different voices written in different tempus signatures simultaneously. The rhythmic complexity that was realized in this music is comparable to that in the twentieth century.

Polyphony

Of equal importance to the overall history of western music theory were the textural changes that came with the advent of polyphony. This practice shaped western music into the harmonically dominated music that nosotros know today. The commencement accounts of this textual evolution were constitute in two anonymous yet widely circulated treatises on music, the Musica and the Scolica enchiriadis. These texts are dated to former inside the final half of the ninth century. The treatises describe a technique that seemed already to be well established in practice. This early polyphony is based on iii elementary and three chemical compound intervals. The offset group comprises fourths, fifths, and octaves; while the second group has octave-plus-fourths, octave-plus-fifths, and double octaves. This new practice is given the name organum by the writer of the treatises.Organum can farther be classified depending on the time period in which it was written. The early organum as described in the enchiriadis tin can exist termed "strict organum" Strict organum can, in turn, be subdivided into two types: diapente(organum at the interval of a fifth) and diatesseron (organum at the interval of a fourth). However, both of these kinds of strict organum had problems with the musical rules of the time. If either of them paralleled an original chant for too long (depending on the mode) a tritone would result. This problem was somewhat overcome with the apply of a second type of organum. This 2d way of organum was chosen "costless organum." Its distinguishing factor is that the parts did not accept to move only in parallel motion, just could too movement in oblique, or contrary movement. This fabricated it much easier to avoid the dreaded tritone. The final manner of organum that developed was known as "melismaticorganum", which was a rather dramatic divergence from the rest of the polyphonic music up to this point. This new fashion was not note against note, but was rather one sustained line accompanied by a florid melismatic line. This final kind of organum was also incorporated by the about famous polyphonic composer of this fourth dimension—Léonin. He united this style with measured discant passages, which used the rhythmic modes to create the superlative of organum limerick. This final phase of organum is sometimes referred to equally Notre Matriarch school of polyphony, since that was where Léonin (and his student Pérotin) were stationed. Furthermore, this kind of polyphony influenced all subsequent styles, with the after polyphonic genera of motets starting as a trope of existing Notre Dameorganums.

Another important chemical element of Medieval music theory was the unique tonal organisation by which pitches were arranged and understood. During the Eye Ages, this systematic arrangement of a serial of whole steps and half steps, what nosotros now call a calibration, was known as a manner. The modal organisation worked like the scales of today, insomuch that it provided the rules and fabric for melodic writing. The eight church building modes are: Dorian, Hypodorian, Phrygian, Hypophrygian, Lydian, Hypolydian, Mixolydian, and Hypomixolydian. Much of the information concerning these modes, likewise as the practical application of them, was codified in the eleventh century by the theorist Johannes Afflighemensis. In his work he describes three defining elements to each mode. The finalis, the reciting tone, and the range. The finalis is the tone that serves as the focal point for the mode. It is also virtually e'er used as the last tone (hence the proper noun). The reciting tone (sometimes referred to as the tenor or confinalis) is the tone that serves as the main focal point in the melody (particularly internally). It is by and large also the tone almost frequently repeated in the piece, and finally the range (or ambitus) is the maximum proscribed tones for a given fashion. The eight modes can be farther divided into 4 categories based on their last (finalis). Medieval theorists called these pairs maneriae and labeled them co-ordinate to the Greek ordinal numbers. Those modes that accept d, due east, f, and chiliad as their final are put into the groups protus, deuterus, tritus, and tetrardus respectively. These can and so exist divided further based on whether the mode is "authentic" or "plagal." These distinctions deal with the range of the mode in relation to the final. The authentic modes have a range that is about an octave (one tone in a higher place or below is allowed) and offset on the final, whereas the plagal modes, while still covering about an octave, start a perfect fourth beneath the authentic. Another interesting aspect of the modal system is the universal allowance for altering B to Bb no matter what the mode. The inclusion of this tone has several uses, but one that seems peculiarly mutual is in order to avoid melodic difficulties caused, in one case again, past the tritone.

These ecclesiastical modes, although they accept Greek names, have piddling relationship to the modes every bit set out by Greek theorists. Rather, near of the terminology seems to be a misappropriation on the office of the medieval theorists.Although the church modes have no relation to the ancient Greek modes, the overabundance of Greek terminology does signal to an interesting possible origin in the liturgical melodies of the Byzantine tradition. This system is called oktoechos and is also divided into eight categories, called echoi.For specific medieval music theorists, see besides: Isidore of Seville, Aurelian of Réôme, Odo of Cluny, Guido of Arezzo, Hermannus Contractus, Johannes Cotto (Johannes Afflighemensis),Johannes de Muris, Franco of Cologne, Johannes de Garlandia (Johannes Gallicus), Anonymous Iv, Marchetto da Padova (Marchettus of Padua), Jacques of Liège, Johannes de Grocheo, Petrus de Cruce (Pierre de la Croix), and Philippe de Vitry.

hallbergdriale.blogspot.com

Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/musicappreciation_with_theory/chapter/overview-of-medieval-music/

Share this post