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by
Cynthia J. Cyrus
The medieval musical
experience is impossible to recapture, for most of the music of daily
life is lost to us. The sounds of street hawkers, the songs sung in the
fields to lighten the tedium of labor, the dances that accompanied so
many festivities, much of the music intended for the stage, and even the
musical component of many troubadour songs have proven ephemeral. Even
the music that 'survives' does so in a fashion that leaves unanswered
fundamental questions about how it originally sounded. The medieval musician,
professional or amateur, expected to improvise, adding and changing musical
materials as he or she performed a piece. The kind of instrument or voice
to be used, the pitches in the melody, the kind of accompaniment (if any)
might vary from one time to the next, as might the tempo, the volume,
or even the rhythm. Medieval notation can be frustratingly vague for the
modern scholar attempting to reconstruct a plausible and historically-informed
medieval sound. Yet the music that does survive forms a sumptuous legacy,
ranging from the sacred to the profane and from monophonic texture with
a single melody sung alone to the richly polyphonic with several independent
voices operating simultaneously. The church, the court, the university,
the town, and the tavern have all contributed tangibly to our musical
heritage.
Most serious
music in the Middle Ages, both sacred and secular, was song, involving
words as an important element (not abstract musical design, as in the
more recent European musical tradition.) Therefore aspects of text-music
relations, such as liturgical function or poetic form, are an essential
element in understanding the music.
This entry
provides a basic historical overview of medieval music for the non-specialist,
addressing the following topics:
Plainchant
Music as a liberal art vs music as a practical
craft
Musical additions to the liturgy, ca. 900-ca.1100
Early polyphony: organum, conductus, motet, ca.
1000-ca. 1300
Secular music for a single line, ca. 1150-ca.
1300
The fourteenth century
Conclusion
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