Unit III The Middle Ages

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Unit IIIThe Middle Ages

• Chapter 13
• Secular Music in the Middle Ages

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Medieval Secular Music

• secular - worldly, not of the church
• Minstrels
• jongleurs - itenerant musicians who wandered from
  town to town performing. Looked upon with
  disdain by most of society
• troubadours and trouvères - noble
  composer/musician/poets who became an inseparable
  part of medieval court life. Known as
  Minnesingers in Germany

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Courtly Poetry

• Wide range of subjects
• ballads
• love songs
• political and moral songs
• war songs
• chronicle of Crusades
• laments
• dance songs

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Courtly Poetry

• reflected Age of Chivalry - espoused valor,
  honor, nobility of character, devotion to an
  ideal, the quest for perfect love
• Idealized love and unrequited passion were the
  stock and trade of the day. Songs of praise of
  the Virgin Mary fall in this same vein
• Kalenda maya by Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, typifies
  the tradition of the courtly troubadour. See
  Listening Guide 4 on pp.78-79 for text, form, and
  theme. ( CD 1/6-10)

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The Ars Nova

• The Ars Nova (new art) of the beginning of the
  fourteenth century in France, and later Italy,
  shows a new refinement of rhythm, meter, harmony
  and counterpoint
• Writers, painters and composers turned
  increasingly from religious to secular themes
• Isorythm was the primary development of the Ars
  Nova with its repeated rhythmic patterns (talea)
  and repeated melodic patterns (color)

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Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300-77)

• composer/poet, secretary to John of Luxemburg,
  King of Bohemia
• active in the court of Charles, Duke of Normandy,
  later king of France
• Canon of Cathedral of Rheims
• composed both sacred and secular music

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Machauts Music

• Machauts career both as a courtier and cleric
  gave rise to composition of both sacred
  (religious) and secular (non-religious) music.
• Over 20 motets
• many secular chansons (French for song)
• A complete setting of the Mass ordinary

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Machauts Music

• New freedom of rhythm (syncopation, mixing of
  duple, triple meters)
• Set texts of courtly love when composing secular
  chansons
• Use of formes fixe

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Formes fixe

• Special fixed forms in which both the poetry
  and the music use refrains, or repeats. The way
  in which the musical repeats and the poetic
  repetition coincide was dictated by the specific
  form used
• Three primary formes fixe include the rondeau,
  the ballade and the virelai

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The Chanson Puis quen oubli

• Polyphonic chanson in 3 voices
• Rondeau form (ABaAabAB) - Capital letters
  indicate where there is a refrain or return of
  both a repeated poetic phrase and a repeated
  musical phrase
• Poetry of courtly love reflecting the classic
  image of unrequited love (Since I am forgotten
  by you, sweet friend, I bid farewell to a life of
  love and joy.)
• See Listening Guide 5 on p. 81 for themes and
  text translation (CD 1/16-20)

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Instrumental Music

• Instrumental music found its beginnings in the
  dance
• Unlike vocal music, instrumental music was rarely
  written down. It was most likely a largley
  improvised music
• When accompanying voices, instruments most likely
  doubled the voice lines rather than playing
  independent parts

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Medieval Instruments

• early instruments fall into the same broad
  categories as their modern successors--string,
  woodwind, brass, percussion and keyboard
• additionally, instruments are divided into two
  broad categories
• soft (bas) suitable for indoor use
• loud (haut) suitable for outdoor use

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Soft Instruments

• recorder - predecessor of the flute
• lute - plucked string instrument from the Middle
  East
• harp and psaltery - plucked string instruments
  from biblical times
• rebec and vielle - Medieval predecessors of
  modern bowed string instruments

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Loud Instruments

• shawm - ancestor of the modern oboe
• slide trumpet - developed into the sackbut, the
  Medieval predecessor of the modern trombone
• tabor - a large cylindrical drum
• nakers - small drums usually played in pairs

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Organs

• large organs were in common use in Medieval
  times, requiring teams of men to operate the
  bellows and slider mechanisms
• portative and positive organs were small,
  portable organs with just a few ranks of pipes
• the regal was a small organ named for the reed
  stops of the larger instruments

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Dance Music

• Most of the extant instrumental pieces are
  monophonic dance melodies. This represents only
  the framework, however, of music which was highly
  embellished, and to which percussion and a drone
  were probably added
• The saltarello, an Italian jumping dance, was
  a common type of instrumental dance as was the
  estampie, a slower, ceremonial French dance