1. Secular Music in the Middle Ages

3. Secular Music: Middle Ages
Music did exist outside of the church.
1st notated secular music: 12th & 13th centuries: Troubadours and Trouveres : French Nobles…
Most Famous: Troubadour Guillaume IX, duke of Aquitaine; trouvere Chastelain de Couci
Knights had reputations as musical poets
Most preserved because clerics wrote them down.

4. Secular Music: Middle Ages
Songs performed by court minstrels
Most deal with love, but some about the Crusades,dance songs and spinning songs
Southern France: women troubadours addressed songs to men

5. Secular Music: Middle Ages
About 1650 Troubadour and Trovere melodies preserved
Notation does not indicate rhythm, but had a regular meter and a clear beat,unlike gregorian chant

6. Secular Music: Middle Ages
Wandering minstrels ( jongleurs----juggler)
Music and acrobatics in castles, taverns and town squares
Didn’t have rights and on the lowest social class, same level as prostitutes and slaves
Few found work in the service of the nobility
Provided information like newspaper (tabloid)
Performed songs written by others; played instrumental dances on harps fiddles and lutes

7. Estampie Medieval dance Oldest surviving instrumental dance forms
Single melodic line notated, but does not specify instrument
Instrumental accompaniments were probably improvised for most dance tunes
Most just added a drone-two notes repeated at an interval of a fifth
In triple meter, strong fast beat

8. Development of Polyphony
Most music was monophonic, one line of music
Between AD, monks in monasteries began adding second line to Gregorian chant
Second line was improvised, not notated
Duplicated chant melody at different pitch.
Written in parallel motion, note against note at the interval of a 4th or 5th

9. Organum Gregorian chant with one or more additional melodic lines
Between , organum became truly polyphonic
2nd melodic line began to be more independent of the 1st line
Sometimes in contrary motion
1100,2nd line even more independent, different rhythms
Bottom chant long notes, top chant shorter notes

10. School of Notre Dame
1150 Paris-intellectual and artistic capital of Europe
Paris became center of polyphonic music
University of Paris attracted leading scholars of the time
Cathedral of Notre Dame (1163) epitome of gothic architecture
Known composers : Leonin and Perotin (School of Notre Dame)

11. School of Notre Dame
composers developed rhythmic innovations
Use of measured rhythm, with definite time values and meter
1st time in history , precise rhythms and pitches
Initially notation indicated certain rhythmic patterns and beat was subdivided into threes
Most sounds hollow and thin by today’s standards
Few triads (later, triad became basic consonant chord structure)
Triad initially was considered dissonant
As middle ages advanced, triads were used more often; polyphonic music became more rich by our standards