Lecture 5: MEDIEVAL MUSIC I

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Part 2: Video Intro LECTURE 5: Medieval Music I

INTRODUCTION

Do you think that there’s such a thing as progress in the arts? Do you think that the arts can improve, or get better? Progress is easy to spot in science and technology—but was Renaissance painting an improvement over Medieval? Is 19^th century music better than 18^th? What do you think? (Email me if you want to share your opinion!)

I ask this because Medieval music can seem simple at first hearing, and medieval singers and instrumentalists might appear to be rather unsophisticated. But I don’t think that’s the case at all. In fact, some of the feats of medieval performers were absolutely prodigious—virtually without compare in modern times. Let me take you for a moment into the life of a monk in the middle ages, and I will show you what I mean.

You can listen to this example of medieval chant while you read…

The average monk living in a monastery attended nine services each day (nine!) The first service, called Matins, started before daybreak at around 3 or 4:00 a.m. Every 2 to 3 hours after that was another service, throughout the day until after sunset. Each service consisted of various chants that were sung from memory. Now here comes the astonishing part: each one of those services had different music, and each day’s services were different from the next day’s. So just do the math—9 services per day times 365 services per year! That is literally thousands of chants that were committed to memory! It is said that it took practically an entire lifetime to completely memorize all the chants of the liturgical year. And to think that all of this musical activity was carried out around their other duties, such as farming, baking, caring for the ill, studying and writing. I have nothing but admiration for such Homeric skill…

I gave you an example from a monk’s life because Medieval music really centers around the life of the Christian church. The reason for this is quite simple. There were no concerts in the middle ages (public concerts did not really get started much before the late 18^th century), and most of the population was illiterate. Monasteries were centers of learning (the "universities" of their day) and monks in monasteries were the only people who had the skill to write down music. (They were also the only ones who could afford the expensive writing materials such as pergament, needed for manuscripts.)

PLAINCHANT-

The main type of sacred music in the early middle ages was called plainchant or Gregorian chant. Gregorian chant is named for Pope Gregory the Great (ca.540-604), who, according to legend, composed hundreds of chants under divine inspiration. Though scholars no longer believe that Gregory authored the entire chant repertoire, they do ascribe to him the organization and consolidation of the vast chant repertoire. Gregorian chant is monophonic, meaning that it is music of one single line. (The example you heard above was monophonic.) Plainchant can be syllabic (meaning that the text is set one-note-to-one-syllable), or neumatic (meaning that the text is set with 3 or 4 notes to a syllable), or melismatic (meaning that there are many notes to one syllable. A melisma was a special touch, reserved for words such as "alleluia" and was meant to express the joy and exuberance of the word.)

Your Kamien record set has an example of a melismatic piece composed by an extraordinary woman: Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179). Hildegard’s parents offered her, their tenth child, to the service of the Church, as was the custom of the time, and she entered the convent at the age of eight. She eventually became an abbess and even founded her own independent convent in Rupertsberg, Germany. She was a poet and acknowledged author of books on science, medicine, and theology. If you are interested, you can learn more about Hildegard of Bingen on the web!

POLYPHONY-

Around 900 A.D. there arose a school of composers at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris who began to explore the idea of embellishing plainchant by putting two, three and eventually four different lines together. This early type of polyphonic composition was called Organum, or Notre Dame Organum. Here is an example of it.

This early polyphony was ‘one small step for the middle ages, and one giant leap for the history of music,’ because it spelled the beginnings of formal composition. Organum was actually composed and notated, and the first composers’ names to come down to us in musical history are in fact the two leaders of the Notre Dame school: Leonin (1159-1201)and Perotin (1170-1236).

Polyphony marked the beginnings of true musical coordination and composers reacted to this by cultivating an increasingly complex style. Later medieval polyphony was in fact so rhythmically complicated that even today some of it is regarded as extremely difficult to perform!

Of the nine services which a monk attended daily, the one at 10 a.m. was the most important. This was the Mass, also known as Liturgy, Holy Communion, Eucharist, or Lord’s Supper. Mass consisted of readings from scripture, prayers, a sermon, and of course—music. The musical portions of the Mass were of two types: the Ordinary and the Proper. The Ordinary used the same, non-Biblical texts each day (hence the name, "ordinary"). The Proper changed from day to day and season to season and consisted of texts that were "appropriate" (hence the name, "proper") for the occasion. These were Biblical texts that might focus, for instance, on the birth of Christ on December 25 or the resurrection on Easter Sunday.

There are five movements (self-contained sections) which make up the Ordinary of the Mass. They are: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus (& Benedictus), and Agnus Dei. Throughout the Middle Ages (and beyond), it was these five movements that composers devoted their best efforts to, and which we now refer to when we use the term, "Mass." The Mass was the ultimate creation--the highest statement--for a composer.

Be sure to listen to the Agnus Dei from Machaut's Notre Dame Mass, on the Kamien record set for an example of one of the most celebrated medieval masses. This work is known not only for being the longest single extant medieval composition, but also for being the first unified, polyphonic setting of the mass composed by a single composer. (Before this work, the five mass movements were usually compiled from different composers.)

PERFORMANCE STYLE-

It is still a matter of controversy among musicologists (scholars who study the history of music, as opposed to musicians, who are practicioners of the musical arts) as to whether instruments were played in church in the middle ages. Many people think that, except for the organ, instruments were by and large forbidden, being a distraction, or somehow an impure addition. As for the style of singing, it is believed that a "straight" tone was cultivated, meaning that singers did not use vibrato (a vascillating of the tone which is currently used very heavily by both pop singers and classical). This makes sense, because vibrato tends to obscure the exact pitch--which would not be desirable in large, stone, resonating churches which naturally blurred sound.

You probably are very familiar with the architecture of medieval churches—large resonating stone edifices. The music of church services was designed to take advantage of the acoustical beauty of the churches by either physically separating groups of singers or performing in one of three ways:

Responsorially: meaning that a soloist (or soloists) alternated with a choir.

Antiphonally: meaning that the choir was split into two groups which alternated.

Direct: A straight delivery, with no alternation.

Since plainchant was transmitted orally for many generations we still do not have a precise idea about how it was performed. The earliest notation of this music was little more than slanted lines drawn above the text indicating general direction, up or down. It was not until about the 10^th century when an Italian monk named Guido of Arezzo assigned red and yellow lines to specific pitches. But even Guido’s system was ambiguous, and did not deal with rhythmic notation. It was rhythmic notation, in particular, that presented the most problems both for composers and performers. As one scribe put it, "The notes in the old books were excessively ambiguous, because [they] were all equal, and [singers] were occupied solely with the intellect saying, 'I understand this to be a long note, I understand this to be a short one.'"

Those of you who already read music are familiar with our modern system of rhythmic notation. It's a system that's simple enough to be understood by a child and many of us indeed learned it as children. It may surprise you, then, to learn that this clear, simple, even obvious way of notating rhythm took hundreds of years to develop, with various systems proposed along the way.

The first system devised around by the 13th century was that of "rhythmic modes." These six modes were simple, common rhythmic patterns that were superimposed on the notes. It was what we might today call a "modular" solution—a kind of plug-in rhythm. Below are the six rhythmic modes:

One could switch from one mode to another during a piece, and even slightly elaborate on a mode from time to time. But obviously this "cookie-cutter" system of punching out rhythmic values was not the most flexible. It was replaced (around 1260) with a system devised by Franco of Cologne, which we now call "mensural notation." In mensural notation, notes have a value that changes with the context, or under certain circumstances. In other words, it’s not like our present system in which, for example, a half-note always equals two quarter-notes. Mensural notation had four basic single-note signs, of which the basic unit was the Breve:

Here are some of the rules of the "Franconian" system.

A Long could be worth either three beats or two.
A breve was usually worth one beat, but could, under certain circumstances, be "altered" to two beats.
The semi-breve was worth 1/3 of a beat, or, if "altered," 2/3 of a beat.

Got that ? ? ! !

The rules under which these notes changed value were complicated, to say the least, and required that the performer be looking ahead as well as counting backwards in order to figure out the proper values!

Shortly, though, the French devised a system that simplified counting, resulting in the invention of time signatures (an indication at the beginning of the piece as to basic units of rhythm). So as Byzantine as this system was, it provided the basis for some of our modern concept of notation.

Before closing out this lecture on the Middle Ages, I wanted to share with you a tasty little treat—some Medieval recipes! My love of food coupled with my interest in history has resulted in my collecting recipes from different periods, and from time to time in this course I'll post some recipes. If you share this interest and have any good recipes to share, please e-mail me! In the meantime, Bon-appetit!

Tart in Ymbre Day ("Tart for an Ember Day")
Take and perboile oynouns and erbis and presse out water and hewe hem smale. Take grene chese and bray it in a morter, and temper it up with ayren. Do butter, safroun and salt, and raisouns corauns, and a litel sugur with powdour douce, and bake it in a trape, and serve it forth.

Ember days were days when meat was not permitted to be eaten. To make this pastry, parboil 2 onions and 1tbs. parsley, 1 tsp. sage. Drain onions and add 2 tb. butter. Blend 3 oz. cream cheese or 1/2 c. cottage cheese and 4 eggs. Stir everything together with a pinch of saffron, 1/2 tsp. salt, 2 tbs. currants, 1/8 tsp. sugar, pinch each ground cardamon and mace. Pour into pastry shell and bake in 350 oven, 30-40 minutes, or until filling is set and pastry is lightly browned.

If you are interested in the literature of the Middle Ages, a beautiful website devoted to the literature of the Middle Ages, Renaissance and 17th century is Luminarium.