The Middle Ages

The traditions of Western music can be traced back to the social and religious developments that took place in Europe during the
Middle Ages, the years roughly spanning from about 500 to 1400 A.D. Because of the domination of the early Catholic Church during
this period, sacred music was the most prevalent. Beginning with Gregorian Chant, sacred music slowly developed into a polyphonic
music called organum performed at Notre Dame in Paris by the twelfth century. Secular music flourished, too, in the hands of the
French trouvres and troubadours, until the period culminated with the sacred and secular compositions of the first true genius of
Western music, Guillaume de Machaut.
Music had been a part of the world's civilizations for hundreds of years before the Middle Ages. Primitive cave drawings, stories from
the Bible, and Egyptian heiroglyphs all attest to the fact that people had created instruments and had been making music for centuries.
The word music derives from the ancient Greek muses, the nine goddesses of art and
science. The first study of music as an art form dates from around 500 B.C., when
Pythagoras experimented with acoustics and the mathematical relationships of tones. In so
doing, Pythagoras and others established the Greek modes: scales comprised of whole
tones and half steps.
With the slow emergence of European society from the dark ages between the fall of the
Roman empire and the predominance of the Catholic Church, dozens of "mini-kingdoms"
were established all over Europe, each presided over by a lord who had fought for and won
the land. Mostly through superstitious fear, early Catholic leaders were able to claim
absolute power over these feudal lords. The Church was able to dictate the progress of arts and letters according to its own strictures
and employed all the scribes, musicians and artists. At this time, western music was almost the sole property of the Catholic Church.

Gregorian Chant
The early Christian church derived their music from existing Jewish and Byzantine religious chant. Like
all music in the Western world up to this time, plainchant was monophonic: that is, it comprised a single
melody without any harmonic support or accompaniment. The many hundreds of melodies are defined
by one of the eight Greek modes, some of which sound very different from the major/minor scales our
ears are used to today. The melodies are free in tempo and seem to wander melodically, dictated by the
Latin liturgical texts to which they are set. As these chants spread throughout Europe , they were
embellished and developed along many different lines in various regions and according to various sects.
It was believed that Pope Gregory I (reigned 590-604) codified them during the sixth-century,
establishing uniform usage throughout the Western Catholic Church. Although his actual contribution to
this enormous body of music remains unknown, his name has been applied to this music, and it is
known asGregorian Chant.
Gregorian chant remains among the most spiritually moving and profound music in Western culture. An
idea of its pure, floating melody can be heard in the Easter hymn Victimae paschali laudes.
Many years later, composers of Renaissance polyphony very often used plainchant melodies as the basis for their sacred works.

Notre Dame and the Ars Antiqua
Sometime during the ninth century, music theorists in the Church began experimenting with the idea of singing two melodic lines
simultaneously at parallel intervals, usually at the fourth, fifth, or octave. The resulting hollow-sounding music was
called organum and very slowly developed over the next hundred years. By the eleventh century, one, two (and much later, even
three) added melodic lines were no longer moving in parallel motion, but contrary to each other, sometimes even crossing. The
original chant melody was then sung very slowly on long held notes called the tenor (from the Latin tenere, meaning to hold) and the
added melodies wove about and embellished the resulting drone.
This music thrived at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and much later became
known as the Ars Antiqua, or the "old art." The two composers at Notre Dame especially known for composing in this style
are Lonin (fl. ca. 1163-1190), who composed organa for two voices, and his successor Protin (fl. early13th century), whose
organa included three and even four voices. Protin's music is an excellent example of this very early form of polyphony (music for
two or more simultaneously sounding voices), as can be heard in his setting of Sederunt principes.
This music was slowly supplanted by the smoother contours of the polyphonic music of the fourteenth century, which became known
as the Ars Nova.




The Trouvres and the Troubadours
Popular music, usually in the form of secular songs, existed during the Middle Ages. This music
was not bound by the traditions of the Church, nor was it even written down for the first time until
sometime after the tenth century. Hundreds of these songs were created and performed (and later
notated) by bands of musicians flourishing across Europe during the 12th and 13th centuries, the
most famous of which were the French trouvres and troubadours. The monophonic melodies of
these itinerant musicians, to which may have been added improvised accompaniments, were often
rhythmically lively. The subject of the overwhelming majority of these songs is love, in all its
permutations of joy and pain. One of the most famous of these trouvres known to us (the great
bulk of these melodies are by the ubiquitous "Anonymous") is Adam de la Halle (ca. 1237-ca.
1286). Adam is the composer of one of the oldest secular music theater pieces known in the
West,Le Jeu de Robin et Marion. He has also been identified as the writer of a good many songs
and verses, some of which take the form of the motet, a piece in which two or more different
verses (usually of greatly contrasted content and meter) are fit together simultaneously, without
regard to what we now consider conventional harmonies. Such a piece is De ma dame vient! by this famous trouvre.
Although secular music was undoubtedly played on instruments during the Middle Ages, instrumental dance music didn't come into
its own until the later Renaissance.



Guillaume de Machaut and the Ars Nova
Born: Champagne region of France, ca. 1300
Died: Rheims, 1377
Having had a clerical education and taken Holy orders, Machaut's career as a poet and
composer took flight when he joined the court of John, Duke of Luxembourg and
King of Bohemia around 1323, serving as the king's secretary until that monarch's
death in battle at Crcy in 1346. Sometime before this, Machaut had settled in Rheims
where he remained until his death, serving as canon in the cathedral there. His
services as a composer were sought out by important patrons, including the future
Charles V of France. His poetry was known throughout Europe and his admirers
included Geoffrey Chaucer. Machaut is probably best remembered for being the first
composer to create a polyphonic setting of the Ordinary of the Catholic Mass (the Ordinary being those parts of the liturgy that do not
change, including theKyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei). The new style of the fourteenth century, dubbed the Ars Nova by
composers of the period, can be heard in the "Gloria" from Machaut's Messe de Notre Dame. This new polyphonic style caught on
with composers and paved the way for the flowering of choral music in the Renaissance.
Although today the Mass is probably his best-known work, Machaut also composed dozens of secular love songs, also in the style of
the polyphonic "new art." These songs epitomize the courtly love found in the previous century's vocal art, and capture all the joy,
hope, pain and heartbreak of courtly romance. The secular motets of the Middle Ages eventually evolved into the great outpouring of
lovesick lyricism embodied in the music of the great Renaissance Madrigalists.
Guillaume de Machaut is the first composer in Western music history who seemed to be conscious of his artistic achievements and of
his place in history. To assure that place, Machaut saw to it that his work was painstakingly copied and artfully illustrated, the first
known example of a composer thus preserving his own work for posterity.