Middle Ages Flashcards

1
Q

Goliard Songs

A
•	Wine and women songs
•	Not received well in society – vagabond lifestyle
•	Were educated performers – clerics
•	Music transmitted aurally
•	The Carmina Burana
o	13th century
o	Songs of the Benedktneuren Monastary
o	Text in Latin, German, French
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2
Q

Chanson de Geste

A
  • Simple Melodic formula
  • Transmitted orally
  • Surviving on the 11th century
  • Sung by Jongleurs – Minstrels
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3
Q

Jongleurs

A
  • Street performer – itinerate
  • Male and female professional musicians
  • 10th century
  • Traveled town to town
  • Low social class
  • Formed guilds
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4
Q

Bards

A

• Poet-singer

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5
Q

Troubadours and Trouveres

A
  • Poet-Composers in Southern France in the 12th and 13th centuries
  • Inventors of songs: Monophonic, syllabic, few melismatic passages
  • From any class of society (merchants to kings)
  • Didn’t travel around, they wrote the music
  • Excepted to higher classes in society because of their talents
  • Most performed their own works, those who did not allowed their works to be performed by minstrels
  • Trobairitz = women
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6
Q

Chanson (Canso)

A
  • Secular song with French words

* Polyphonic works of the 14th century

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7
Q

Strophic Form

A
  • All stanzas sung to the same through-composed melody

* New music for every line of poetry

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8
Q

Langu d’oc

A

• Southern France language used by the troubadors

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9
Q

Langue d’ oil

A

• Northern France language used by the trouveres

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10
Q

Minnesinger

A
  • 12th-14th Century – German Speaking Lands
  • Music focused on love (Minne -> means love)
  • Less eroticism
  • Walter von der Vogelweide
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11
Q

Meistersinger

A
  • Replaced the Minnesinger

* These were trained musicians

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12
Q

Courtly or Ideal Love (fin amors)

A

• Storyline of secular music
• Love that could not happen
o Peasant in love with nobility

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13
Q

Bernart de Ventadorn

A
  • One of the most widely known troubadours

* Can vei la lauzeta mover (song)

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14
Q

Adam de la Halle

A
  • Trouvère
  • Jeu de Robin et de Marion
  • 13th century
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15
Q

Cantigas de Santa Maria

A

• Collection of over 400 Spanish monophonic songs in honor of the Virgin Mary

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16
Q

Estampie

A

• Most common medieval French dance form
• Each section played twice
o First ends in open cadence with the second ending with a closed cadence

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17
Q

Organum

A
  • 9th-13th centuries
  • addition of one or more voices to an existing chant
  • Musica enchriadis - Manual on Music : it discusses the different types of “singing together”
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18
Q

Parallel Organum

A

An additional voice is added to existing chant either a 4th below (most common) or a 5th above

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19
Q

Oblique organum

A

Voices move in the same direction (one may remain stable to avoid a tritone)

  • more interesting
  • leads to cadences at the end of phrases
  • basics of counterpoint being developed
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20
Q

Florid organum

A
  • 1100

- the tenor is the original voice and supporting parts are held out

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21
Q

Occursus

A

Cadence at the end of a phrase of organum

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22
Q

Vox Orginalis

A

Voice added to the original chant melody in an organum

23
Q

Vox Prinicipalis (Tenor)

A

Original chant melody

Organum

24
Q

Organum Duplum

A

2-Voice organum

25
Q

Notre Dame School

A
  • Artist style– Ars Antiqua
  • Substantial developments in polyphony
  • Leonin & Perotin
26
Q

Leonin

A

• Activity 1160-1201
• Author: Magnus Liber Organi (Big Book of Organum)
o Gradual and Proper
o Written more for solists – not full monk choir
o Took different melismatic lines and added florid organum

27
Q

Discant

A

• 12th century style of polyphony – Upper voices sing 2-3 notes for every note of lower voices
• Clausula
o A Clause – A self-contained section of music ending in a cadence

28
Q

Rhythmic Modes (Modal Notation)

A

• A set of six durational patterns used by composers of the Notre Dame School (12th C.). Basis of rhythmic notation
Modal Notation

29
Q

Perotin

A

• Edited some of Leonin’s works by adding other voices
• Triplum (3 voice) and Quadruplum (4 voice)
• Considered the first “modern” composer
o Organized all voices, repetitions, compositional devices
o Works had various sections (single voice -> multiple voice)
• Viderunt Omnes
o Organum quadruplum
o Repetition of phrases
o Voice exchange

30
Q

Motet

A

• Sections of chants (clausula) weretaken from the church and French and Latin words were added – becoming a motet
• New words related to old text but were very secular
• The Tenor would be called the cantus firmus (played or sung)
• 14th Century – Most dominant Genre
• Motet in The Renaissance
o Polyphonic piece with sacred text in Latin
o Increase in dramatic text and emotion
o Became a means of entertainment
o Both sacred and secular
o Used imitation : All voices equal
o Des Prez

31
Q

Conductus

A
  • A serious medieval song
  • Monophonic or polyphonic
  • Setting a rhymed, rhythmic Latin poem
  • Form of music clergy used when moving outside – not used in the mass
  • 2-4 voices based on a new tenor
  • Secular & Religious content
32
Q

Aquitanian polyphony

A

• New types of polyphony appeared in Aquitaine in Southwestern France
• Polyphonic versus (settings of Latin poems)
• Discant
o Both voices move at about the same rate
• Florid Organum
o the upper voice sings many notes for each note in the lower voice

33
Q

Score Notation

A

• Used in early 12th century to show the alignment of parts but durations were not notated

34
Q

Ligatures

A

• Combinations of note groups in rhythmic modes

35
Q

Musica enchriadis/Scolica enchriadis

A

• Polyphony was first described in these treatise which used the term organum for the various styles of polyphony and pieces that uses polyphony

36
Q

Winchester Troper

A

• Collection of notated organum from the early 11th century

37
Q

Ad organum faciendum

A

• A treatise with instruction on how to compose and improvise free organum

38
Q

Petrus de Cruce

A

• 13th century composer of motets
o highly stratified textures
o tenor as harmonic foundation
o duplum as accompaniment to the very active triplum

39
Q

Sumer is icumen in

A
  • Example of English polyphony

* It is a rota – it is a round at the unison

40
Q

Rondellus

A

• A three-voice song or passage in which the voices in the same range exchange two or three phrases, first hear simultaneously, then taken up in turn by each voice

41
Q

French Ars Nova

A

• New Art
• Comes from a book by Phiilip de Vitry (1291-1361)
o Devises a new system of rhythm called Mensural Notation

42
Q

Mensural Notation

A

• 3 new note types
o Breve, semi-breve, minim
• Perfect Time: Divides breve into 3 parts (triplets)
• Imperfect Time: Divides breve into 2 Parts (eighths)
• Perfect Prolation: Divides semibreve into 3 parts
• Imperfect Prolation: Divides semibreve into 2 parts

43
Q

Isorhythm

A

• Repeating rhythmic pattern
o The pattern that is repeated is called the talea
• Match for rhythm – not pitch
o If the tenor (melody - generally) is repeated it is called the color
• Match for pitch – not rhythm

44
Q

Isorhythmic motet

A

• The tenors of a motet are laid out in segments with identical rhythms that may recur as many as 10 times in one piece

45
Q

Hocket

A

• 13th -14th century
• Alternating rapidly between 2 voices, each resting while the other sings
o As if a single melody is split between 2 voices

46
Q

Phillipe De Vitry

A

• Creator of Mensural Notation
• French Ars Nova
• Composer of Roman de Fauvel
o Narrative poem that satirizing political corruption – both secular and ecclesiastical
o Possibly written as a warning to the King of France
o Fauvel, a jackass, rises from the stable to a powerful position (symbolizes a world turned upside down)
o Name is and acrostic symbolizing the sins he personifies
• Flattery, Avarice, Villainay (U and V were interchangeable), Variete (Fickleness), Envy, Lachete (baseness).
o He ultimately marries and produces little Fauvels – and destroys the world.

47
Q

Guillaume Machaut

A

(c. 1300-1377)
• Messe de Nostre Dame (Mass of Our Lady)
o One of the 1st polyphonic settings of the Ordinary
o One of the 1st cyclic masses
• All movements have a common theme
• Composed on most all of the genres of his time: secular – sacred
• Leading composer of the Ars Nova

48
Q

Chanson

A

• Polyphonic song (French)
• Written is the standard poetic refrain forms
o See Forms Fixes

49
Q

Forms Fixes

A

• Ballade
o French Form Fixe
o 3 stanzas with each having aab and ends with a refrain
• Rondeau
o French Form Fixe
o 1 Stanza having ABaAabAB
• Capital letters indicate lines of refrain and lowercase indicate new text set to music from the refrain
• Virelai
o French Form Fixe
o A bba A bba A bba A
• Refrain ‘A’ alternates with stanzas having bba form, the ‘a’ uses the same music as the refrain

50
Q

Italian Trecento

A

• Italian art (art, music, literature) of the 1300’s
• Baletta
o 14th century Italian form AbbaA – ‘A’ is the refrain
o single stanza bba is sung to the music of the refrain
• Madrigal
o In the 14th century it is an Italian poetic form and its setting have 2 or 3 stanzas followed by a ritornello (the closing section – in a different meter than the previous verses)

51
Q

Fransico Landini

A
  • Born in Northern Italy
  • Performer on portative organ
  • Learned music after being blinded by disease
  • Landini Cadence
  • 140 ballate for 2-3 voices
52
Q

Musica ficta

A
  • Performers altered notes chromatically
  • feigned notes” that were outside the gamut
  • Alterations made to avoid tritones or to create smoother lines
53
Q

Ars Subtilior

A
  • Late 14 century
  • Ars Nova raised to a high level of complexity and intricacy
  • Term coined by Ursla Gunther