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This is the sacred and secular music composed during the Middle Ages, which covers a huge stretch of time, from A.D. 476, following the fall of the Roman Empire, to the start of the Renaissance in the 14th and 15th century. So that\u2019s around 1000 years, making it the longest major era of Western classical music.<\/div>\n\n
How much is it possible to know about medieval music?<\/b><\/h2>\n
\u00a0<\/b><\/div>\n
A lot of early medieval music is a mystery. Many people of the period were illiterate, so music was passed on orally, rather than being written down, which means that we\u2019ve lost it. Plus, it wasn\u2019t until 1030 that an Italian Benedictine monk named Guido d\u2019Arezzo invented a four-line stave<\/a><\/strong>, using his hand to remember the lines.<\/div>\n\n
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What is Gregorian chant?<\/b><\/a><\/li>\n
why the early music of the 1970s was truly a moment to savour<\/b><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>
<\/p><\/div> <\/section><\/div>\n\n
And later?<\/b><\/h2>\n
\u00a0<\/b><\/div>\n
The music that was written down was usually church music, as it tended to be members of the clergy who could write \u2013 and even that is hard to decipher for a modern musician. That\u2019s because there were different systems of musical notation from today, the best-known being square notation. It wasn\u2019t always written very clearly, and for a long time there was no way of indicating precise rhythm. As for secular music: the first surviving fragments we have date from the first half of the 13th century.<\/div>\n\n
So from the available evidence, what do we know about the music\u2019s development?<\/b><\/h2>\n\n
We know that medieval music progressed through several stages.<\/div>\n\n
\u00a0Monophonic chant<\/b><\/h3>\nThe singing of religious texts in Latin to a single unison melodic line \u2013 otherwise known as plainchant \u2013 was popular from the beginning of the Medieval period. The best known of these monophonic chants was Gregorian Chant,\u00a0 which spread through western Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries.<\/div>\n\n\n
Heterophony and polyphony<\/b><\/h3>\n\n
Over the centuries plainchant gradually evolved into something a little more elaborate with the addition of extra vocal lines. One result was heterophony, in which multiple variants of a single melodic line are heard simultaneously. Another was polyphony, characterised by multiple voices with separate melodic lines and rhythms, the first true example of this being motets, whereby a number of vocal parts were set against a main melody, or cantus firmus.<\/div>\n\n
Secular music<\/b><\/h3>\n\n
With the arrival of the motet<\/a><\/strong>, secular lyrics, often about courtly love, became more common. During the 12th and 13th centuries, Troubadours and Trouv\u00e8res \u2013 French poet-musicians \u2013 travelled the coutryside singing secular plainsong in Occitan, a Romance language that evolved from vernacular Latin. Another form of secular music was the Italian madrigal, which were usually duets about a pastoral subject.<\/div>\n\n
Ars Nova<\/b><\/h3>\n\nThe late medieval period (14th century onwards) saw the flourishing of Ars Nova (\u2018New Art\u2019), a sophisticated form of polyphony that shunned the limitations of 13th century rhythmic modes, thanks to developments in notation. The result of this was music of greater expressiveness and variety than had previously been possible.<\/div>\n\n
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Modes in music: what they are and how they are used<\/b><\/a><\/li>\n
What\u2019s the world\u2019s oldest musical instrument?<\/b><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>
<\/p><\/div> <\/section><\/div>\n\n<\/body><\/html>\n
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By Hannah Nepilova Published: Saturday, 08 October 2022 at 12:00 am What is medieval music? \u00a0 This is the sacred and secular music composed during the Middle Ages, which covers a huge stretch of time, from A.D. 476, following the fall of the Roman Empire, to the start of the Renaissance in the 14th and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":20373,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"3"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/10\/a-guide-to-medieval-music.jpg",640,691,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/10\/a-guide-to-medieval-music-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/10\/a-guide-to-medieval-music-278x300.jpg",278,300,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/10\/a-guide-to-medieval-music.jpg",640,691,false],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/10\/a-guide-to-medieval-music.jpg",640,691,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/10\/a-guide-to-medieval-music.jpg",640,691,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/10\/a-guide-to-medieval-music.jpg",640,691,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Hannah Nepilova Published: Saturday, 08 October 2022 at 12:00 am What is medieval music? \u00a0 This is the sacred and secular music composed during the Middle Ages, which covers a huge stretch of time, from A.D. 476, following the fall of the Roman Empire, to the start of the Renaissance in the 14th and…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/20372"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}