Medieval music

Lore & Background

Medieval music includes liturgical music for the church, other sacred music, and secular music such as love songs and dances. Much of it is purely vocal, like Gregorian chant, but instrumental music and combinations of voices and instruments also existed. During the earlier medieval period, liturgical music was monophonic chant, with Gregorian chant becoming the dominant style. Polyphonic genres, where multiple independent melodic lines are performed simultaneously, began to develop in the high medieval era and became prevalent by the later 13th and early 14th century. The development of polyphonic forms is often associated with the Ars antiqua style of Notre-Dame de Paris, though improvised polyphony around chant lines predated it. Organum elaborated on a chant melody by adding one or more accompanying lines, sometimes in parallel intervals. The principles of organum date back at least to an anonymous 9th-century tract, the Musica enchiriadis. The largest surviving body of organum comes from the Notre-Dame school, often called the Magnus Liber Organi. Related polyphonic genres include the motet and clausula, which were often built on plainchant or organum passages. By the end of the 13th century, motets expanded to include secular topics and French as well as Latin texts. In Italy, the secular madrigal became popular, featuring greater fluidity in the leading melody and giving rise to polyphonic canons called caccie. In the late Middle Ages, some purely instrumental music began to be notated, though rarely; dance music such as the estampie, ductia, and nota survives.

Reader's Guide

The medieval period laid the foundation for notational and theoretical practices that would shape Western music into the norms of the common practice era. The most obvious development is a comprehensive music notational system, but theoretical advances in rhythm and polyphony are equally important. The earliest medieval music had no notation and was transmitted orally. As Rome sought to centralize liturgies, the need to transmit chant melodies across distances led to the introduction of neumes—signs written above chant texts indicating pitch direction. Neumes likely evolved from classical Greek and Roman grammatical signs, such as the acutus (/) for a rising voice and the gravis (\) for a lowering voice. These markings gave a general sense of melodic contour but did not specify exact intervals, so a singer could not sight-read an unfamiliar song. Neumes eventually evolved into the virga (higher note) and punctum (lower note). This notation system developed no earlier than the 8th century but was firmly established by the 9th. The medieval period also saw the creation and adaptation of systems that enabled composers to document and transmit musical ideas more easily, though notation coexisted with oral tradition. The legacy of medieval music includes the establishment of polyphony, the development of notation, and the creation of genres that influenced later Renaissance music.

Did You Know?

• The earliest medieval music had no notational system and was transmitted by oral tradition.
• The Musica enchiriadis, an anonymous 9th-century tract, describes the tradition of duplicating plainchant in parallel motion at the interval of an octave, fifth, or fourth.
• The hurdy-gurdy was a mechanical violin that used a rosined wooden wheel attached to a crank to bow its strings.
• The pan flute, possibly of Hellenic origin, was popular in medieval times and had pipes made of wood graduated in length to produce different pitches.