Notes Mus 110

5.  Most of the music that was notated during the middle ages was sacred or secular? sacred

In court music, the violin was a new instrument and was commonly used. Keyboard instruments were also used when it came to court music. It included the instruments like the spinet and the harpsichord. Believe it or not, but in the courts, they would sometimes have groups of people perform almost like an orchestra. Combinations of instruments would be played in front of the court and play certain music for them to impress them (Elizabethan Music, 2015). Court music also included court musicians to help lead the instruments that were being played.

Some well known keyboard players include Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, and Debussy. A popular keyboard that is still used today is the organ. The organ ranges in size from a small closet to an entire church. An organ has from two to eight manuals that can have completely different sounds. Air is pushed through pipes to make the many sounds that can be played on a pipe organ. (Raeburn 11) he most known keyboard, the piano, was improved in this era from the harpsichord. The piano has eighty-eight keys with seven octaves plus a few keys. According to “Musical”, sound is made by hammers that strike the strings to vibrate them (“Musical”). The harpsichord was the precursor to the piano. Instead of hitting the strings, the harpsichord would pluck them to make a more metallic sound. The spinet was a small upright piano that is similar to the harpsichord. Another instrument is the virginal. Like the spinet, it is also similar to the harpsichord (“Elizabethan“). Keyboards were and still are the most known class of instrument. This era gave us variations and new keyboards to use and

Music was a very important asset to the peoples’ society. According to historians, the medieval period was the beginning of the unbroken tradition of notated Western music. Music was the one thing that all classes could enjoy, royals, nobles, women, slaves, anyone could listen to music being played out on the streets. Music was used in cathedrals and abbeys, dances and was even part of poetry. Most of the poetry from the Medieval Period known today were sung in front of crowds during events and festivals. Vocal music was very important in churches and worshipping. Back in the medieval time, there weren’t any radios, so all of the music was played live. Festivals, celebrations and the holiday season were very popular times for music. During an important holiday, Mayday, the dancers danced to high

“Christianity has developed into a highly ritual-filled tradition and many of its significant practices are acts of public worship associated with the sacraments.” – Living Religion, 4th edition pg. 266.

The society of Sumer, as said in a document “ was home to a privileged class of elites who headed households by nearby irrigated land”. Sumer was a growing civilization with a written language, education, government, religion, economy, and family hierarchy. “Sumer was a particular civilization that developed in the region of Mesopotamia.” Due to Mesopotamia being so plentiful, this let Sumer bloom into a great civilization. A written language in Sumer was in the form of cuneiform, characters formed by the arrangement of small wedge-shaped elements.

“The best feature of these services is the fact that the fine seasonal Latin hymns have remained, although,

The Medieval period began in 500 A.D. and ended in 1450 A.D. During this time in particular, the Catholic Church had significant influence on how music was used and created. Sacred music, for example, was most prevalent because of this. Due to the religious nature of this period, music in the church had to adhere to very specific regulations, some of which included prayers such as plainchants or Gregorian chants. A single melody without harmony, or one musical part sung together in unison, is called a Monophonic melody, which was sung primarily by monks. Some time later, around 900 A.D., the using of two melodic lines was permitted by the church, this music was called organum. A low, continuous note called a drone, was sung at the same time as the main melody. The two melodies were often moving in contrasting motion to each other. By the Late-Medieval period, 1100 A.D., the music of the church had shifted from monophonic to more polyphonic, often two or more varying parts.

Next, Medieval instruments were made by hand, and most of the time were prized possessions that they would never give up, but instruments today are machine made, and are sold and distributed for a lot of money. Lastly, the difference between Medieval instruments and modern day instruments, is today we have the saxophone, the best instrument ever

From 1400 to 1600 A.D., the Renaissance was a period of a rediscovery of Greek ideals for musicians to explore possibilities of their art. It was during this time that ideas were able to better circulate, because individualism began to increase, and the printing of music helped to preserve and distribute musical ideas (History). Also, as opposed to the medieval period, the Renaissance began to expand upon the type of sound that was created by adding the voices of women in choirs, as well as expanding instrumental music. The texture of music also began to change, with homophonic and polyphonic compositions. Sacred vocal polyphony was used rather than monophony in the form of masses and motets, while secular pieces also included madrigals and songs. Instrumental pieces usually were short during this time, and were for dancing (History).

​ Life in the Middle Ages revolved around the Church, which was the Roman Catholic. So, we can imagine early music was pretty much from church. Every morning at 9 o’clock was Mass, a significant ceremony done to commemorate the Last Supper. At this church service, the music was the Gregorian Chant. The Gregorian chant is performed in the Latin language, unison voice and accompanied by no instruments which was believed that the text of the song which carried the divine message from God was more important. The music was just to help you get to a spiritual place (Wright, 4-1a).

Although there was only one instrument that I could hear (an organ), this service seemed to have a strong focus on music. Most of the time, a small choir or individual at the altar was singing in Greek, with occasional “readings”

The liturgical worship tradition is a fairly broad spectrum that includes churches from various sects. Catholic Rites, Eastern Orthodox Churches, Presbyterians, the Church of England, Episcopal Churches, Lutheran Synods, and most Methodist sects follow the liturgical pattern of worship. The traditional focus of these churches was the celebration of the Eucharist. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the focus in traditional worship

Beginning at around 476 AD, the medieval era is mostly related to the church as most music from this era is sacred. The style of this era, the Gregorian chant is monophonic only comprising of the plainchant (or the single- line melodies of early church music) in texture only comprising of the plainchant (or the single- line melodies of early church music). It is not until the arrival of the French composers Léonin and Pèrotin in 1100 and 1200 respectively that polyphony would be incorporated into musical worship with the “decoration” of Gregorian chant with one or more simultaneous musical lines, thus transitioning from Gregorian chant to Organum. During this era, most of the music and roles for musicians belonged to the church except for the troubadours of southern France and the trouvères of northern France. The music was responsorial between the mass and the father during church and was

The Chorus often speaks in this way at the end of a scene to clarify what has just gone on. (e.g. at the end of the first scene, the chorus clarifies the diseased state that the city of Thebes has descended into: "Still breeding plague, unpitied infants lie...and wives and mothers, grey with hoary age...by every alter mourn.")