Medieval music

Medieval music encompasses a Early 500–1150, High 1000–1300, together with Late 1300–1400 medieval music.

Medieval music includes liturgical music used for the church, & secular music, non-religious music; solely vocal music, such(a) as Gregorian chant and choral music music for a combine of singers, solely instrumental music, and music that uses both voices and instruments typically with the instruments accompanying the voices. Gregorian chant was sung by monks during Catholic Mass. The Mass is a reenactment of Christ's Last Supper, forwarded to afford a spiritual connection between man and God. part of this association was introducing through music.

During the medieval period the foundation was laid for the music notation and music theory practices that would vintage Western music into the norms that developed during the Common Practice period of divided up music writing practices which encompassed the Baroque era 1600–1750, Classical era 1750–1820 and Romantic era 1800–1910. The most significant of these is the coding of a comprehensive music notational system which enabled composers to write out their song melodies and instrumental pieces on parchment or paper. Prior to the development of musical notation, songs and pieces had to be learned "by ear", from one grownup who knew a song to another person. This greatly limited how many people could be taught new music and how wide music could spread to other regions or countries. The development of music notation exposed it easier to disseminate spread songs and musical pieces to a larger number of people and to a wider geographic area. However the theoretical advances, especially in regard to rhythm—the timing of notes—and polyphony—using multiple, interweaving melodies at the same time—are equally important to the development of Western music.

Music theory

The music theory of the medieval period saw several advances over preceding practice both in regard to tonal material, texture, and rhythm.

Concerning rhythm, this period had several dramatic vary in both its concepts and notation. During the early medieval period there was no method to notate rhythm, and thus the rhythmical practice of this early music is quoted to debate among scholars. The first kind of or situation. rhythmic system developed during the 13th century and was based on a series of modes. This rhythmic schedule was codified by the music theorist Johannes de Garlandia, author of the De Mensurabili Musica c.1250, the treatise which defined and near totally elucidated these rhythmic modes. In his treatise Johannes de Garlandia describes six species of mode, or six different ways in which longs and breves can be arranged. each mode establishes a rhythmic pattern in beats or tempora within a common detail of three tempora a perfectio that is repeated again and again. Furthermore, notation without text is based on chains of ligatures the characteristic notations by which groups of notes are bound to one another.

The rhythmic mode can generally be determined by the patterns of ligatures used. one time a rhythmic mode had been assigned to a melodic line, there was broadly little deviation from that mode, although rhythmic adjustments could be indicated by draw different in the expected pattern of ligatures, even to the extent of changing to another rhythmic mode. The next step forward concerning rhythm came from the German theorist Franco of Cologne. In his treatise Ars cantus mensurabilis "The Art of Mensurable Music", written around 1280, he describes a system of notation in which differently shaped notes have entirely different rhythmic values. This is a striking change from the earlier system of de Garlandia. Whereas before the length of the individual note could only be gathered from the mode itself, this new inverted relationship presents the mode dependent upon—and determined by—the individual notes or figurae that have incontrovertible durational values, an innovation which had a massive affect on the subsequent history of European music. Most of the surviving notated music of the 13th century uses the rhythmic modes as defined by Garlandia. The step in the evolution of rhythm came after the reorient of the 13th century with the development of the Ars Nova style.

The theorist who is most living recognized in regard to this new kind is Philippe de Vitry, famous for writing the Ars Nova "New Art" treatise around 1320. This treatise on music gave its name to the style of this entire era. In some ways the modern system of rhythmic notation began with Vitry, who completely broke free from the older view of the rhythmic modes. The notational predecessors of sophisticated time meters also originate in the Ars Nova. This new style was clearly built upon the work of Franco of Cologne. In Franco's system, the relationship between a breve and a semibreves that is, 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 three semibreves. Sometimes the context of the mode would require a group of only two semibreves, however, these two semibreves would always be one of normal length and one of double length, thereby taking the same space of time, and thus preserving the perfect subdivision of the tempus. This ternary division held for all note values. In contrast, the Ars Nova period introduced two important changes: the number one was an even smaller subdivision of notes semibreves, could now be divided into minim, and thewas the development of "mensuration."

Mensurations could be combined in various manners to produce metrical groupings. These groupings of mensurations are the precursors of simple and compound meter. By the time of Ars Nova, the perfect division of the tempus was non the only option as duple divisions became more accepted. For Vitry the breve could be divided, for an entire composition, or piece of one, into groups of two or three smaller semibreves. This way, the tempus the term that came to denote the division of the breve could be either "perfect" tempus perfectum, with ternary subdivision, or "imperfect" tempus imperfectum, with binary subdivision. In a similar fashion, the semibreve's division termed prolation could be divided into three minima prolatio perfectus or major prolation or two minima prolatio imperfectus or minor prolation and, at the higher level, the longs division called modus could be three or two breves modus perfectus or perfect mode, or modus imperfectus or imperfect mode respectively. Vitry took this a step further by indicating the proper division of a precondition piece at the beginning through the use of a "mensuration sign", equivalent to our modern "time signature".

Tempus perfectum was indicated by a circle, while tempus imperfectum was denoted by a half-circle the current symbol , used as an choice for the Renaissance music. numerous scholars, citing a lack of positive attributory evidence, now consider "Vitry's" treatise to be anonymous, but this does not diminish its importance for the history of rhythmic notation. However, this permits the first definitely identifiable scholar to accept and explain the mensural system to be de Muris, who can be said to have done for it what Garlandia did for the rhythmic modes.

For the duration of the medieval period, most music would be composed primarily in perfect tempus, with special effects created by sections of imperfect tempus; there is a great current controversy among musicologists as to whether such(a) sections were performed with a breve of survive length or whether it changed, and if so, at what proportion. This Ars Nova style remained the primary rhythmical system until the highly syncopated works of the Ars subtilior at the end of the 14th century, characterized by extremes of notational and rhythmic complexity. This sub-genera pushed the rhythmic freedom provided by Ars Nova to its limits, with some compositions having different voices written in different mensurations simultaneously. The rhythmic complexity that was realized in this music is comparable to that in the 20th century.

Of represent 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 we know today. The first accounts of this textural development were found in two anonymous yet widely circulated treatises on music, the Musica and the Scolica enchiriadis. These texts are dated to sometime within the last half of the ninth century. The treatises describe a technique that seemed already to be alive established in practice. This early polyphony is based on three simple and three compound intervals. The first group comprises fourths, fifths, and octaves; while the moment group has octave-plus-fourths, octave-plus-fifths, and double octaves. This new practice is given the name organum by the author of the treatises. Organum can further be classified depending on the time period in which it was written. The early organum as described in the enchiriadis can be 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 usage of a second type of organum. This second style of organum was called "free organum". Its distinguishing factor is that the parts did not have to progress only in parallel motion, but could also move in oblique, or contrary motion. This made it much easier to avoid the dreaded tritone. Thestyle of organum that developed was required as "melismatic organum", which was a rather dramatic departure from the rest of the polyphonic music up to this point. This new style was not note against note, but was rather one sustained line accompanied by a florid melismatic line. Thiskind of organum was also incorporated by the most famous polyphonic composer of this time—Léonin. He united this style with measured discant passages, which used the rhythmic modes to create the pinnacle of organum composition. Thisstage of organum is sometimes referred to as Notre Dame 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 later polyphonic genera of motets starting as a trope of existing Notre Dame organums.

Another important element of medieval music theory was the system by which pitches were arranged and understood. During the Middle Ages, this systematic arrangement of a series of whole steps and half steps, what we now required a ] The modal system worked like the scales of today, insomuch that it provided the rules and fabric for melodic writing. The eight church modes are: Dorian, Hypodorian, Phrygian, Hypophrygian, Lydian, Hypolydian, Mixolydian, and Hypomixolydian. Much of the information concerning these modes, as well as the practical application of them, was codified in the 11th century by the theorist Johannes Afflighemensis. In his work he describes three imposing elements to used to refer to every one of two or more people or things mode: theor finalis, the reciting tone tenor or confinalis, an the range or ambitus. The finalis is the tone that serves as the focal point for the mode and, as the name suggests, is almost always used as the final tone. The reciting tone is the tone that serves as the primary focal point in the melody especially internally. it is for generally also the tone most often repeated in the piece, and finally the range delimits the upper and lower tones for a given mode. The eight modes can be further divided into four categories based on their final finalis.