Medieval Era Music Guide: A Brief History of Medieval Music

The Medieval period of music history began around the fall of the Roman empire in 476 AD. It progressed into the sixth century and lasted through the end of the fourteenth century, when it gave way to Renaissance music. Medieval-era music centered around the church. Although secular music existed during Medieval times, most surviving Medieval compositions were written as liturgical music.

The Medieval period of Western music progressed through several stages of development.

• Monophonic chant: Monophonic singing, which is based on a single unison melodic line, was popular from the very beginning of the Medieval era. In civilizations spanning from Rome to Spain to Ireland, somber religious chants—called plainchant or plainsong—dominated the early Medieval period. Monophonic chants like the Gregorian chant spread through western Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries, by which time the Catholic church had standardized vocal music to fit the Gregorian chant model.
• Heterophonic and polyphonic development: As it became mainstream practice, plainchant underwent modest musical development. Organum, a form of heterophonic singing, added a second vocal line to monophonic chant. This second vocal line followed the same melody, but it was staggered and was often a perfect fourth or a perfect fifth away from the main melody. More sophisticated still was the motet, wherein additional vocal parts were set against a main melody, or cantus firmus. Motets grew quite popular by the thirteenth century, and they represented the first true polyphony of the Medieval era. The motet would carry on well past the Medieval era. Renaissance composers like Guillaume Dufay and Baroque composers like J.S. Bach would go on to write motets that fit their own respective eras.
• Secular music: For much of the Medieval era, art served a sacred purpose. Vocal music was liturgical with Latin lyrics, and liturgical dramas were the norm in the theater. Yet with the advent of the motet, secular lyrics became more common, often concerning courtly love. In more informal settings, troubadours and trouvères traveled the European countryside singing secular plainsong in the Romance language Occitan. Another form of secular music was the Italian madrigal, typically a duet about a pastoral subject. (Note that Medieval madrigals are not the same as the madrigals that would sweep Italy, France, and Germany during the Renaissance and early Baroque eras.)
• Ars Nova: In the late Medieval period, a style called Ars Nova (or "new art") fully embraced polyphonic music while simultaneously eschewing the rhythmic modes that limited prior Medieval music. Pioneered in France by the theorist Philippe de Vitry, Ars Nova would lead directly into the Renaissance music that defined the fifteenth century. It popularized the chanson, a style of polyphonic vocal music that incorporated poetry.

As the earliest form of classical music, Medieval music is characterized by the following attributes:

1. 1. Monophony: Until the late Medieval period, most Medieval music took the form of monophonic chant. When extra voices were added, they moved in parallel motion to the main voice, unlike the counterpoint that would define the Renaissance and Baroque eras that followed.
2. 2. Standardized rhythmic patterns: Most Medieval chants followed rhythmic modes that brought a uniform sensibility to the Medieval era. These modes were codified in the thirteenth century music theory text De Mensurabili Musica by Johannes de Garlandia.
3. 3. Ligature-based music notation: The musical notation of the Medieval era does not resemble the notation used today. The notation was based on markings called ligatures, and it did not indicate rhythmic notation. In the eleventh century, Italian music theorist Guido d' Arezzo developed a four-line staff—a precursor to the modern five-line staff. Toward the end of the Medieval era, composer Philippe de Vitry and the French Ars Nova movement helped transform notation into the form used in the early Renaissance.
4. 4. Troubadours and trouvères: Some of the most prominent secular music of the Medieval period was performed by troubadours and trouvères. Troubadours were traveling musicians who accompanied their own singing with string instruments like lutes, dulcimers, vielles, psalteries, and hurdy-gurdies. Troubadours were particularly popular during the twelfth century. Trouvères were poet-musicians who typically belonged to the nobility. They sang in an Old French dialect called langue d'oil.
5. 5. Limited instrumental music: An overwhelming percentage of the Medieval canon is vocal music, but instrumental music was composed for a wide array of musical instruments. These included woodwinds like the flute, pan flute, and recorder; string instruments like the lute, dulcimer, psaltery, and zither; and brass instruments like the sackbut (closely related to the modern trombone).

The vast majority of Medieval music has not survived the centuries because Medieval music notation was infrequent and inconsistent. However, the work of a few prominent composers has survived.

1. 1. Léonin: Léonin was a French composer famous for pioneering polyphonic composition in the style known as organum. Léonin lived and worked at the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris and was part of a composers' collective called the Notre Dame School of Polyphony.
2. 2. Pérotin: Perotinus Magnus, better known as Pérotin, was a contemporary of Léonin in the Notre Dame School of Polyphony. He was heavily associated with the Ars Antiqua genre and is remembered for such works as Salvatoris hodie and Magnus liber organi (Great Book of Organum).
3. 3. Hildegard von Bingen: Von Bingen was a rare Medieval female composer. Based in Germany, she composed monophonic chants for the twelfth-century Catholic church. She specialized in music for women's voices.
4. 4. Guillaume de Machaut: Machaut was the preeminent composer of the Ars Nova school and a master of the isorhythmic motet. He composed sacred music, such as Messe de Nostre Dame, but he was also a prolific poet and wrote extensively about secular topics like love and loss.

Become a better musician with the MasterClass Annual Membership. Gain access to exclusive video lessons taught by the world’s best, including Itzhak Perlman, St. Vincent, Sheila E., Timbaland, Herbie Hancock, Tom Morello, and more.