Medieval Music History: Gregorian Chant to Polyphony

The Writing of Music

Greek and Roman music was alphabetic, assigning each sound a letter of the alphabet. In the 9th century, this type of notation was changed to neumatic notation. The neumes are signs that are placed on syllables, singing and trying to draw the melodic line. Inadvertently, they indicate exact length but serve only as a reminder. The singers devoted many years to memorizing all the melodies.

In the 10th century, the monk Hucbald had the idea of drawing parallel horizontal lines that corresponded to a different pitch. Another monk the following century, Guido d'Arezzo (995-1050), decided to use the lines as well as spaces. Guido d'Arezzo also gave each note the name you know currently. In the 13th century, a first proportional notation system appeared.

Gregorian Chant

After the fall of the Roman Empire, various rites decomposed in each country. During the pontificate of Pope Gregory, this music was called religious plainchant by drawing their unique melodic line without breaks, with an area that did not surpass the octave. This was the first liturgical music.

• Melody: A single melodic line
• Harmony: None
• Timbre: Sole voices
• Texture: Monophonic or monodic

The pace is determined by the rhythm of the Latin text.

Secular Music: Minstrels and Troubadours

In the beginning, religious and secular music had a single melodic line (monodic texture) of free rhythm. Minstrels were vagabonds who went from place to place, entertaining the public. They were half poets, half acrobats. Sometimes, clergy who had left religious life were dedicated to this job, leveraging their cultural superiority. They were called goliards and sang and recited in Latin.

Troubadours belonged to a higher social class and were considered superior to minstrels. Troubadours composed and sang. William IX of Poitiers, Count of Aquitaine (1086-1127), was a troubadour. The central motif of troubadour art was courtly love, but there were other issues such as nature, politics, morality, and heroic deeds.

• Troubadours: Occitan and langue d'oc (Occitan)
• Trouvères: Northern France - Language of oil (French)
• Minnesänger: Germanic countries: Germany

Troubadour Music Characteristics

• Rhythm: Began to become independent of the text
• Tune: One melodic line
• Harmony: None
• Timbre: Voices and instruments
• Texture: Monophonic and monodic

The First Polyphonies

The first polyphonies (Organum) were created starting from a Gregorian melodic line. In the Organum, the vocals are a melody and Gregorian cantus firmus appeared in the 11th century. Later, another polyphonic procedure appeared: the discantus or free organum, where different voices are not parallel but move in opposite directions. A fourth voice was even added.

This polyphonic composition favored the conductus, where the composer already misses singing. A derivative of discantus, the motet, will emerge. In the motet, texts may be different for each voice and, in some cases, even in different languages. This new polyphonic art found its culmination at the end of the 12th and 13th centuries with Leonin and Perotin.

The Mass of Machaut

The Mass of Machaut summarizes many elements of new clusters:

• Freedom of independence
• Rhythm of melody and rhythm of each of the modes
• Ecclesiastical voices
• Change of major and minor scales
• Use of silence as a musical tool

Other Musical Manifestations

During the reign of Alfonso X the Wise, King of Spain and León, the Cantigas de Santa Maria were written between 1250 and 1280. It is an important document of this era. The Llibre Vermell de Montserrat was copied at the end of the 14th century and served the pilgrims. It contains many songs and Latin dances, and some were designed to be sung inside and outside the monastery.