Lecture 5

1. Lecture 5 Early Music

2. Terms • Minnesingers • alba • pastourelle • strophic form • estampies • organum • melismas • motet • Ars antiqua • Ars nova

3. More Terms • ars • isorhythm • hocket

4. Objectives • Hear how elements and structures of music were typically used in the Middle Ages • Identify and follow principle types of music written in the Middle Ages: plainchant, troubadour songs, Notre Dame organum, and ars nova motets

5. When? • 476 C.E. (A.D.) or the fall of the Roman Empire to 1400. • What do you know about this period? • Seen anything in movies?

6. Stuff you should know • Europe was invaded all the time. Huns, Goths, Vikings, Mongols, Islamic armies. • European access to international commerce and communication dropped off. • So the economy shifted to feudalism • Mass migration, invasions, famine, plagues. • Average person lived in primitive brutal conditions • Greco-Roman advances lost.

7. General Observation • Polyphony and music notation were the major musical achievements of the era.

8. Plainchant • Roman Catholic Church was the primary patron of all things musical. • Standardized liturgy led to a standardized was of writing music, called notation. • By 1000 music was notated. • Singing heightened speech to the glory of God.

9. Plainchant Characteristics • Called “plain” because it is an unaccompanied, monophonic, unmetered, and non-rhythmic. • Not constructed on major/minor system • Modes around D(Dorian), E(Phrygian), F(Lydian), G(Mixolydian). • Describe the mood of In Paradisum • Look for characteristic uses of musical elements.

10. Characteristics • Smooth legato melody • Moderate dynamic level • Monophony • Easy tempo • Mode is Mixolydian

11. But what is most striking is what is not there . . . • Lack of meter • Lack of strong cadences • Lack of clear symmetrical phrase relationships • Creates floating otherworldlyness, passionate yet serene.

12. Next . . . Recitation • Vere dignum • Simplification of melody. • Text is more important rather than mood. • Greater rhythmic feeling. • Solo. • Mode is Dorian

13. Plainchant sequence • Columba aspexit • Series of short melodies sung twice. Once by the soloist, once by the choir and modified. • Drone. • A A’

14. Music at Court • 12th and 13th century. • Troubadours in southern France, Trovères in northern France and Minnesingers in Germany. All were of noble birth • Jongleurs were song writers of common station. • Alba was a “dawn song”. • Pastourelle, seduction song of knight on horseback and a maiden.

15. Evolution of Polyphony • Organum is the earliest type of polyphony (900) • Tradition plainchant with another person singing a different tune at the same time to the same words. • Polyphony “evolved” in the period between 1000-1200

16. Evolution • Each note accompanied by another single note (counterpoint). Parallel organum. Same interval same melody. • Then the lines became more independent • Then they started to embellish. The embellishments became so many that the original tune became long a drawn out. • Then two counterpoints were added. • Then then it was metered

17. The two organum guys in Paris, 1163-1235. • Léonin • Pérotin • Lets listen to Alleluia. Diffusa gratia. • Melisma

18. Later Medieval Polyphony • After 1200 polyphony distanced itself from the church. • Upper lines given their own words. Now they were called a Motet from the french word ‘mot or word.

21. Ars Nova • Started around 1300 with “new heights” of sophistication in motet writing. • This motet writing was known as the “new technique” or Ars Nova and the old was organum or Ars Antiqua. • Turbulent time in the world • Rhythm was the main pre-occupation of the composers most notably . . .

22. Guillaume de Machaut (c.1300-1377) • The Motet “Quant et moi” • Based on plainchant, played underneath the singers in this case by a viol. • Isorhythm-successive lengthy passages to identical rhythms but to different melodies. • Hocket is a hiccup.