Middle Ages Flashcards
Goliard Songs
• 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
Chanson de Geste
- Simple Melodic formula
- Transmitted orally
- Surviving on the 11th century
- Sung by Jongleurs – Minstrels
Jongleurs
- Street performer – itinerate
- Male and female professional musicians
- 10th century
- Traveled town to town
- Low social class
- Formed guilds
Bards
• Poet-singer
Troubadours and Trouveres
- 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
Chanson (Canso)
- Secular song with French words
* Polyphonic works of the 14th century
Strophic Form
- All stanzas sung to the same through-composed melody
* New music for every line of poetry
Langu d’oc
• Southern France language used by the troubadors
Langue d’ oil
• Northern France language used by the trouveres
Minnesinger
- 12th-14th Century – German Speaking Lands
- Music focused on love (Minne -> means love)
- Less eroticism
- Walter von der Vogelweide
Meistersinger
- Replaced the Minnesinger
* These were trained musicians
Courtly or Ideal Love (fin amors)
• Storyline of secular music
• Love that could not happen
o Peasant in love with nobility
Bernart de Ventadorn
- One of the most widely known troubadours
* Can vei la lauzeta mover (song)
Adam de la Halle
- Trouvère
- Jeu de Robin et de Marion
- 13th century
Cantigas de Santa Maria
• Collection of over 400 Spanish monophonic songs in honor of the Virgin Mary
Estampie
• Most common medieval French dance form
• Each section played twice
o First ends in open cadence with the second ending with a closed cadence
Organum
- 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”
Parallel Organum
An additional voice is added to existing chant either a 4th below (most common) or a 5th above
Oblique organum
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
Florid organum
- 1100
- the tenor is the original voice and supporting parts are held out
Occursus
Cadence at the end of a phrase of organum
Vox Orginalis
Voice added to the original chant melody in an organum
Vox Prinicipalis (Tenor)
Original chant melody
Organum
Organum Duplum
2-Voice organum
Notre Dame School
- Artist style– Ars Antiqua
- Substantial developments in polyphony
- Leonin & Perotin
Leonin
• 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
Discant
• 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
Rhythmic Modes (Modal Notation)
• A set of six durational patterns used by composers of the Notre Dame School (12th C.). Basis of rhythmic notation
Modal Notation
Perotin
• 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
Motet
• 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
Conductus
- 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
Aquitanian polyphony
• 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
Score Notation
• Used in early 12th century to show the alignment of parts but durations were not notated
Ligatures
• Combinations of note groups in rhythmic modes
Musica enchriadis/Scolica enchriadis
• Polyphony was first described in these treatise which used the term organum for the various styles of polyphony and pieces that uses polyphony
Winchester Troper
• Collection of notated organum from the early 11th century
Ad organum faciendum
• A treatise with instruction on how to compose and improvise free organum
Petrus de Cruce
• 13th century composer of motets
o highly stratified textures
o tenor as harmonic foundation
o duplum as accompaniment to the very active triplum
Sumer is icumen in
- Example of English polyphony
* It is a rota – it is a round at the unison
Rondellus
• 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
French Ars Nova
• New Art
• Comes from a book by Phiilip de Vitry (1291-1361)
o Devises a new system of rhythm called Mensural Notation
Mensural Notation
• 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
Isorhythm
• 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
Isorhythmic motet
• The tenors of a motet are laid out in segments with identical rhythms that may recur as many as 10 times in one piece
Hocket
• 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
Phillipe De Vitry
• 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.
Guillaume Machaut
(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
Chanson
• Polyphonic song (French)
• Written is the standard poetic refrain forms
o See Forms Fixes
Forms Fixes
• 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
Italian Trecento
• 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)
Fransico Landini
- Born in Northern Italy
- Performer on portative organ
- Learned music after being blinded by disease
- Landini Cadence
- 140 ballate for 2-3 voices
Musica ficta
- Performers altered notes chromatically
- feigned notes” that were outside the gamut
- Alterations made to avoid tritones or to create smoother lines
Ars Subtilior
- Late 14 century
- Ars Nova raised to a high level of complexity and intricacy
- Term coined by Ursla Gunther
