Chapter 2: Middle Ages (The Medieval Period)

2.1 OBJECTIVES

1. Identify the timeframe of the Middle Ages
2. Identify functions of music of the Middle Ages
3. Connect prominent composers of the Middle Ages with well-known works.
4. Recognize unique instrumentation of the Middle Ages
5. Critically evaluate stylistic characteristics of the Middle Ages
6. Synthesize music of the Middle Ages with today’s culture

2.2 KEY INDIVIDUALS

• Alfonso the Wise
• Guido of Arezzo
• Guillaume de Machaut
• Hildegard of Bingen
• Pythagoras

2.3 INTRODUCTION AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT

2.3.1 Musical Timeline

• Musical historical event: 2nd millennia BCE: First Hebrew Psalms are written
• Musical historical event: 7th Century BCE: Ancient Greeks and Romans use music for entertainment and religious rites
• Musical historical event: 6th Century BCE: Pythagoras and his experiments with acoustics
• Musical historical event: 4th Century BCE: Plato and Aristotle write about music
• From the 1st Century CE: Spread of Christianity through the Roman Empire
• 4th Century CE: Founding of the monastic movement in Christianity
• Musical historical event:  4th – 9th Century CE: Development/Codification of Christian Chant
• Musical historical event:  c. 400 CE: St Augustine writes about church music
• c. 450 CE: Fall of Rome
• Musical historical event: c. 800 CE: First experiments in Western Music
• 11th Century CE: Rise of Feudalism & the Three Estates
• 11th Century: Growth of Marian Culture
• Musical historical event:11th Century CE: Guido of Arezzo refines of music notation and development of solfège
• 1088 CE: Founding of the University of Bologna
• c. 1095-1291 CE: The Crusades
• Musical historical event: 12th Century CE: Hildegard of Bingen writes Gregorian chant
• c. 1163-1240s CE: Building of Notre Dame in Paris and the rise of Gothic architecture
• Musical historical event: 13th Century CE: Development of Polyphony
• Musical historical event: c. 1275 CE: King Alfonso the Wise collects early songs in an exquisitely illuminated manuscript
• Musical historical event: 1300-1377 CE: Guillaume de Machaut composes songs and church music
• Musical historical event:14th Century CE: Further refinement of musical notation, including notation for rhythm
• 1346-53: Height of the Bubonic Plague (Black Death)

2.3.2 Introduction

What do you think of when you hear the term the Middle Ages (450-1450 CE*)? For some, the semi-historical figures of Robin Hood and Maid Marian come to mind. Others recall Western Christianity’s Crusades to the Holy Land. Still others may have read about the arrival in European lands of the bubonic plague or Black Death, as it was called. For most twenty-first-century individuals, the Middle Ages seem far removed. Although life and music were quite different back then, we hope that you will find that there are cultural threads that extend from that distant time to now.

We normally start studies of Western music with the Middle Ages, but of course, music existed long before then. In fact, the term Middle Ages or medieval period got its name to describe the time in between (or “in the middle of”) the ancient age of classical Greece and Rome and the Renaissance of Western Europe, which roughly began in the fifteenth century. Knowledge of music before the Middle Ages is limited but what we do know largely revolves around the Greek mathematician Pythagoras, who died around 500 B.C.E. (See his profile on a third century ancient coin: Figure 2.1.)

*CE refers to Common Era. The letters BCE refer to Before Common Era. These same designations from the church’s perspective are listed as BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini – In the year of Our Lord).

Pythagoras might be thought of as the father of the modern study of acoustics due to his experimentation with bars of iron and strings of different lengths. Images of people singing and playing instruments, such as those found on the Greek vases provide evidence that music was used for ancient theater, dance, and worship. Writings of Plato and Aristotle referred to music as a form of ethos (an appeal to ethics). As the Roman Empire expanded across Western Europe, so too did Christianity (see Figure 2.2, a map of Western Europe around 1000). Considering that Biblical texts from ancient Hebrews to those of early Christians provided numerous records of music used as a form of worship, the Empire used music to help unify its people: the theory was that if people worshipped together in a similar way, then they might also stick together during political struggles.

Later, starting around 800 CE, Western music is recorded in a notation that we can still decipher today. This brief overview of these five hundred years of the Roman Empire will help us better understand the music of the Middle Ages.

2.3.3 Historical Context for Music of the Middle Ages (800-1400)

During the Middle Ages, as during other periods of Western history, sacred and secular worlds were both separate and integrated. During this time, the Catholic Church was the most widespread and influential institution and leader in all things sacred. The Catholic Church’s head, the Pope, maintained political and spiritual power and influence among the noble classes and their geographic territories; the life of a high church official was not completely different from that of a noble counterpart, and many younger sons and daughters of the aristocracy found vocations in the church. Towns large and small had churches, spaces open to all: commoners, clergy, and nobles. The Catholic Church also developed a system of monasteries, where monks studied and prayed, often in solitude, even while making cultural and scientific discoveries that would eventually shape human life more broadly. In civic and secular life, kings, dukes, and lords wielded power over their lands and the commoners living therein. Kings and dukes had courts, gatherings of fellow nobles, where they forged political alliances, threw lavish parties, and celebrated both love and war in song and dance.

Many important historical developments of the Middle Ages arose in the church or the court. One such important development stemming from the Catholic Church would be the developments of architecture. During this period, architects built increasingly tall and imposing cathedrals for worship through the technological innovations of pointed arches, flying buttresses, and large cut glass windows. This new architectural style was referred to as “gothic,” which vastly contrasts with the Romanesque style, with its rounded arches and smaller windows. Another important development stemming from the courts occurred in the arts. Poets and musicians, attached to the courts, wrote poetry, literature, and music, less and less in Latin—still the common language of the church—and increasingly in their own vernacular languages (the predecessors of today’s French, Italian, Spanish, German, and English). However, one major development of the Middle Ages spanned sacred and secular worlds: universities shot up in locales from Bologna, Italy, and Paris, France, to Oxford, England (the University of Bologna begin the first). At university, a young man could pursue a degree in theology, law, or medicine. Music of a sort was studied as one of the seven liberal arts and sciences, specifically as the science of proportions. (Look for music in this twelfth-century image of the seven liberal arts from the Hortus deliciarum of the Herrad of Landsberg: Figure2.5.)

2.4 MUSIC IN THE MIDDLE AGES: AN OVERVIEW

Not surprisingly, given their importance during the Middle Ages, both the Catholic Church and the network of aristocratic courts left a significant mark on music of the time. Much of the music from that era that was written down in notation and still exists comes from Christian worship or court entertainment. Churches and courts employed scribes and artists to write down their music in beautifully illuminated manuscripts such as this one that features Guillaume Machaut’s “Dame, a vous sans retoller,” discussed later. Churchmen such as the monk Guido of Arezzo devised musical systems such as “solfège” still used today. You may have heard this use of syllables for each note from the 1965 musical, The Sound of Music in the song, “Do, Re, Mi” by Rodgers and Hammerstein.

As we study a few compositions from the Middle Ages, we will see the following musical developments at play: (1) the development of musical texture from monophony to polyphony, and (2) the shift from music whose rhythm is hinted at by its words, to music that has what we refer to today as meter. Although we know that instrumental music existed in the Middle Ages, most of the music that has survived is vocal.

2.5 MUSIC FOR MEDIEVAL CHRISTIAN WORSHIP

The earliest music of Catholic Christianity was chant, that is, monophonic a cappella music, most often sung in worship. As you learned in the first chapter of this book, monophony refers to music with one melodic line that may be performed by one or many individuals at the same time. Largely due to the belief of some Catholics that instruments were too closely associated with secular music, instruments were rarely used in medieval worship; therefore, most chant was sung a cappella, or without instruments. Rhythms of medieval chants were guided by the natural rhythms provided by the words. Late in this period, a circle formed the first time signature in musical notation. It represented completeness, eternity (as does a wedding ring), and the Holy Trinity. Fittingly, this circle stood for a meter of 3 – 3 beats per measure. This was called “perfect time” and was used for sacred music. In contrast, secular music used a circle with a slice cut out on the right to represent, 4, or “imperfect time.” The symbol looks like the letter C (but more accurately, it is an incomplete circle). Today, we call this common time.

Medieval Catholic worship included services throughout the day. The most important of these services was the Mass, at which the Eucharist, also known as communion, was celebrated (this celebration includes the consumption of bread and wine representing the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ). Five chants of the mass (the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei) were typically included in every mass, no matter what date in the church calendar. Catholics, as well as some Protestants, still use this Liturgy in worship today.

In the evening, one might attend a Vespers service, at which chants called hymns were sung. Hymns, like most of the rest of the Catholic liturgy, were sung in Latin. Hymns most often featured four-line strophes in which the lines were generally the same length and often rhymed. Each strophe of a given hymn was sung to the same music, and for that reason, we say that hymns are in strophic form. Hymns like most chants generally had a range of about an octave, which made them easy to sing.

Throughout the Middle Ages, Mary the mother of Jesus, referred to as the Virgin Mary, was a central figure in Catholic devotion and worship. Under Catholic belief, she is upheld as the perfect woman, having been chosen by God to miraculously give birth to the Christ while still a virgin. She was given the role of intercessor, a mediator for the Christian believer with a petition for God, and as such appeared in many medieval chants.

Focus Composition: Ave Generosa by Hildegard of Bingen (Twelfth Century)

Many composers of the Middle Ages will forever remain anonymous. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) from the German Rhineland is a notable exception. At the age of fourteen, Hildegard’s family gave her to the Catholic Church. According to Biblical tradition, it is customary to give ten percent of all that you have to the Church. Hildegard was the tenth child in the family. While in the care of the Church, she studied Latin and theology at the local monastery. Known for her religious visions, Hildegard eventually became an influential religious leader, artist, poet, scientist, and musician. She would go on to found three convents and become an abbess, the chief administrator of an abbey.

Writing poetry and music for her fellow nuns to use in worship was one of many of Hildegard’s activities, and the hymn “Ave Generosa” is just one of her many compositions. This hymn has multiple strophes in Latin that praise Mary and her role as the bearer of the Son of God. The manuscript contains one melodic line that is sung for each of the strophes, making it a strophic monophonic chant. Although some leaps occur, the melody is conjunct. The range of the melody line, although still approachable for the amateur singer, is a bit wider than other church chants of the Middle Ages. The melody also contains melismas at several places. A melisma is the singing of multiple pitches on one syllable of text. Overall, the rhythm of the chant follows the rhythm of the syllables of the text.

Chant is by definition monophonic, but scholars suspect that medieval performers sometimes added musical lines to the texture, probably starting with drones (a pitch or group of pitches that were sustained while most of the ensemble sang together the melodic line). Performances of chant music today often add embellishments such as occasionally having a fiddle or small organ play the drone instead of being vocally incorporated. Performers of the Middle Ages possibly did likewise, even if prevailing practices called for entirely a cappella worship.

LISTENING GUIDE

Audio

UCLA Early Music Ensemble; Soloist Arreanna Rostosky; Audio & video by Umberto Belfiore; listen through 3:17 for the first four strophes

• Composer: Hildegard of Bingen
• Composition: Ave Generosa
• Date: 12th century
• Genre: Hymn (a type of chant)
• Form: Strophic
• Nature of Text: multiple, four-line strophes in Latin, praising the Virgin Mary [text and translation found at Norma Gentile]
• Performing Forces: small ensemble of vocalists

What we want you to remember about this composition:

• It is chant.
• It is a cappella.
• Its rhythms follow the rhythms of the text.
• It is monophonic (although this performance adds a drone).

Other things to listen for:

• Its melodic line is mostly conjunct.
• Its melody contains many melismas.
• It has a Latin text sung in a strophic form.

Table 2: Listening Guide for Ave Generosa

2.5.1 The Emergence of Polyphonic Music for the Medieval Church

Initial embellishments such as the addition of a musical drone to a monophonic chant were probably improvised during the Middle Ages. With the advent of musical notation that could indicate polyphony (music with more than one line), composers began writing polyphonic compositions for worship, initially intended for select parts of the Liturgy to be sung by the most trained and accomplished of the priests or monks leading the mass. Originally, these polyphonic compositions featured two musical lines at the same time; eventually, third and fourth lines were added. Polyphonic liturgical music, originally called organum, emerged in Paris around the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In this case, growing musical complexity seems to parallel growing architectural complexity.

Composers wrote polyphony so that the cadences, or ends of musical phrases and sections, resolved to simultaneously sounding perfect intervals. Perfect intervals are the intervals of fourths, fifths, and octaves. Such intervals are called perfect because they are the first intervals derived from the overtone series (see chapter one). As hollow and even disturbing as perfect intervals can sound to our modern ears, the Middle Ages used them in church partly because they believed that what was perfect was more appropriate for the worship of God than the imperfect.

In France, Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300-13) emerged as the most important poet and composer of his century. He is the first composer about which we have much biographical information, due in part to the fact that Machaut himself, near the end of his life, collected his poetry into volumes of manuscripts, which include a miniature image of the composer (see Figure 2.9 of Machaut at work from a fourteenth century manuscript). We know that he traveled widely as a cleric and secretary for John, the King of Bohemia. Around 1340, he moved to Reims (now in France), where he served as a church official at the cathedral. There he had more time to write poetry and music, which he seems to have continued doing for some time.

Focus Composition: Agnus Dei from the Nostre Dame Mass (c. 1364 Ce) by Guillaume de Machaut

We think that Machaut wrote his Mass of Nostre Dame around1364.This composition is famous because it was one of the first compositions to set all five movements of the mass ordinary as a complete whole: these movements are the pieces of the Catholic liturgy comprising every Mass, no matter what time of the year. Movement in music refers to a musical section that sounds complete but that is part of a larger musical composition. Musical connections between each movement of this Mass cycle—the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei—suggest that Machaut intended them to be performed together, rather than being traded in and out of a Mass, based on the preferences of the priest leading the service. Agnus Dei was composed after the Machaut’s brother death in 1372, this Mass was likely performed every week in a side chapel of the Reims Cathedral. Medieval Catholics commonly paid for Masses to be performed in honor of their deceased loved ones.

As you listen to the Agnus Dei movement from the Nostre Dame Mass, try imagining that you are sitting in that side chapel of the cathedral at Reims, a cathedral that looks not unlike the Cathedral of Notre in Paris. Its slow tempo might remind us that this was music that memorialized Machaut’s dead brother, and its triple meter allegorized perfection. Remember that although its perfect intervals may sound disturbing to our ears, for those in the Middle Ages they symbolized that which was most appropriate and musically innovative.

LISTENING GUIDE

Audio

Oxford Camerata directed by Jeremy Summerly

• Composer: Guillaume de Machaut
• Composition: Agnus Dei from the Nostre Dame Mass
• Date: c. 1364 CE
• Genre: Movement from the Ordinary of the Mass
• Form: A – B – A
• Nature of Text: Latin words from the Mass Ordinary: Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, Miserere nobis” (Lamb of God, who takes away the sin, have mercy on us)
• Performing Forces: small ensemble of vocalists

What we want you to remember about this composition:

• It is part of the Latin mass.
• It uses four-part polyphony.
• It has a slow tempo.

Other things to listen for:

• Its melodies lines have a lot of melismas
• It is in triple meter, symbolizing perfection
• It uses simultaneous intervals of fourths, fifths, and octaves, also symbolizing perfection.
• Its overall form is A-B-A.

Table 3: Listening Guide for Agnus Dei from the Nostre Dame Mass

2.6 MUSIC IN MEDIEVAL COURTS

Like the Catholic Church, medieval kings, dukes, lords and other members of the nobility had resources to sponsor musicians to provide them with music for worship and entertainment. Individuals roughly comparable to today’s singer-songwriters served courts throughout Europe. Like most singer-songwriters, love was a favored topic. These poet-composers also sang of devotion to the Virgin Mary and of the current events of the day.

Many songs that merge these two focus points appear in a late thirteenth-century manuscript called the Cantigas de Santa Maria (Songs for the Virgin Mary), a collection sponsored by King Alfonso the Wise who ruled the northwestern corner of the Iberian Peninsula. Cantigas de Santa Maria also includes many illustrations of individuals playing instruments. The musician on the left in Figure 2.10 is playing a rebec and the one to the right a lute. Elsewhere in the manuscript these drummers and fifers appear (see Figure 2.11). These depictions suggest to us that, outside of worship services, much vocal music was accompanied by instruments. We believe such songs as these were also sung by groups and used as dance music, especially as early forms of rhythmic notation indicate simple and catchy patterns that were danceable. Other manuscripts also show individuals dancing to the songs of composers such as Machaut.

Focus Composition: Song of Mary, No. 181: “The Virgin will aid those who most love her”

“The Virgin will aid those who most love her,” is one of over four hundred songs praising the Virgin Mary in the Cantigas de Santa Maria described above. “The Virgin will aid those who most love her” praises Mary for her help during the crusades in defeating a Moroccan king in the city of Marrakesh. It uses a verse and refrain structure like those discussed in chapter one. Its two-lined chorus (called a refrain) is sung at the beginning of each of the eight four-lined strophes that serve as verses. The melody (or primary line for the singer) for the refrain is repeated for the first two lines of the verse; a new melody then is used for the last two lines of the verse. In the recent recording done by Jordi Savall and his ensemble, a relatively large group of men and women sing the refrains, and soloists and smaller groups of singers perform the verses. The ensemble also includes a hand drum that repeats rhythmic patterns, a medieval fiddle, and a lute, as well as medieval flutes and shawms, near the end of the excerpt below. These parts are not notated in the manuscript, but it is likely that similar instruments would have been used to accompany this monophonic song in the Middle Ages.

LISTENING GUIDE

Audio

Performed by Jordi Savall and Ensemble; listen from 0:13 through 3:29.

• Composer: Anonymous
• Composition: Song of Mary, No. 181: “The Virgin will aid those who most love her” (Pero que seja a gente d’outra lei [e]descreuda)
• Date: c. 1275
• Genre: Song
• Form: Refrain [A] & verses [ab] = A-ab
• Nature of Text: Refrain and strophes in an earlier form of Portuguese, praising the Virgin Mary
• Performing Forces: small ensemble of vocalists, men and women singing together and separately

What we want you to remember about this composition:

• It is music for entertainment, even though it has a sacred subject.
• It is monophonic.
• Its narrow-ranged melody and repetitive rhythms make it easy for non-professionals to sing.

Other things to listen for:

• In this recording, the monophonic melody is sung by men and women and is played by a medieval fiddle and lute; a drum plays the beat; near the end of the excerpt, you can also hear flutes and shawms.
• Its musical form is A-ab, meaning that the refrain is always sung to the same music.

Table 4: Listening Guide for Song of Mary, No. 181: “The Virgin will aid those who most love her” (Pero que seja a gente d’outra lei [e]descreuda)

Medieval poet composers also wrote a lot of music about more secular love, a topic that continues to be popular for songs to the present day. Medieval musicians, composers, and much of European nobility in the Middle Ages were invested in courtly love. Courtly love is love for a beloved, without concern for whether it will be returned. The speakers within these poems recounted the virtues of their beloved, acknowledging the impossibility of ever consummating their love and pledging to continue loving their beloved to the end of their days.

2.7 CHAPTER SUMMARY

In this chapter, we studied music almost 1500 years from today. In some ways, it differs greatly from our music today, though some continuous threads exist. Individuals in the Middle Ages used music for worship and entertainment, just as occurs today. They wrote sacred music for worship and used sacred ideas in entertainment music. Music for entertainment included songs about love, religion, and current events as well as music that might be danced to. Though the style and form of their music is quite different from ours in many ways, some aspects of musical style have not changed. Conjunct music with a relatively narrow range is still a typical choice in folk and pop music, since it is easy for even the amateur to sing. Songs in strophic form and songs with a refrain and contrasting verses also still appear in today’s pop music. In future chapters, we will find that, regardless of the age of this music, it still lives in certain places of our culture.

2.8 GLOSSARY

A cappella – vocal music without instrumental accompaniment

Cadence – the ending of a musical phrase providing a sense of closure, often through the use of one chord that resolves to another

Chant – text set to a melody written in monophonic texture with un-notated rhythms typically used in religious worship

Courtly Love – love for a beloved, without any concern for whether the love will be returned, called “courtly” because it was praised by those participating in medieval courts

Drone – a sustained pitch or pitches often found in music of the Middle Ages or earlier and in folk music

Hymn – religious song most generally having multiple strophes of the same number and length of lines and using strophic form

Mass – Catholic celebration of the Eucharist consisting of liturgical texts set to music by composers starting in the Middle Ages

Melisma – multiple pitches sung to one syllable of text

Polyphony – musical texture that simultaneously features two or more relatively independent and important melodic lines

Refrain – a repeating musical section, generally also with repeated text; sometimes called a “chorus”

Rhythm According to the Text – rhythm that follows the rhythm of the text and is not notated

Song – a composition sung by voice(s)

Strophe – section of a poem or lyric text generally of a set number of lines and line length; a text may have multiple strophes

Strophic – musical form in which all verses or strophes of a song are sung to the same music

Syllabic – music in which each syllable of a text is set to one musical note

Verse and Refrain Form – a musical form (sometimes referred to as verse and chorus) in which one section of music is sung to all the verses and a different section of music is sung to the repeating refrain or chorus