The Middle Ages (200 A.D. to 1450 A.D.)
As you recall, one of the important themes of the course is to connect music with significant social and historical themes. The history of western classical music is rife with social and cultural events that inspired the minds of composers.
Back around the time of Christ, the predominant world power was the Roman Empire. It controlled nearly all of Western Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Due to civil wars and outside invaders, such as Germanic tribes, around 200 A.D. the Roman Empire began its decline. That left a huge power vacuum in the world, which the Roman Catholic Church eagerly sought and filled. Eventually, the Church exerted power over average peasants, the aristocratic class, rulers and countries. It even launched the Crusades, which were military campaigns against Middle Eastern groups in order for Christians to regain access to holy places in Jerusalem.
The Height of the Roman Empire, 117 C.E.
How does this all connect with music? The Church was also clear on that topic as well. The Church viewed secular music as a self centered, sensual pleasure. Yet, it also recognized the power of music to evoke certain emotions and to transform the mind and spirit in such a way as to be more receptive or to draw closer to God. So the Church developed its own sacred “music” called plainchant or Gregorian chant. According to how we in this class defined music, Gregorian chant is definitely music. However, the Church preferred to differentiate it from the secular or non-religious stuff that peasants performed while drinking wine into the wee hours of the night. The Church viewed chant as prayer. The moods of the performances were somber, sublime, sober, and serious.
As you might imagine, the one dominant theme during this period was a view of the universe as God centered. Some also refer these times as the Dark Ages because the development of science and knowledge, initially introduced to western civilization by the early Greeks, was not supported or encouraged by the Church. Sometimes the Church punished heretics, such as Galileo who proclaimed that the earth revolved around the sun, not vice versa. He was placed under house arrest and perhaps lucky his head remained attached to his shoulders.
Listening Example:
Go to Spotify and listen to Pascha Nostrum, which is a chant of jubiliation celebrating the life and death of Jesus Christ. Monks sang these during their daily prayer services. The texts come from the Greek Scriptures.
Note the following stylistic features in the performance (there are surprisingly many things to point out):
- 0-18 seconds. You are listening to a solo singer sing a single melody. This kind of musical texture is called monophony (single melody).
- 19 seconds to 1:00. You will note that the chorus joins in. Now there are more than two singers singing the same melody, the same way, and at the same time. This is called unison monophony.
- From about 1:00 on note how the singers take one syllable of the word Alleluia, such as the first vowel ‘A’ and sing several different notes to it. As you may recall this is called melisma.
- Note that the entire performance is sung a capella, which means it is with voice only and no instrumental accompaniment.
- Listen to the rhythm. There is none, right? In other words, there is no instrument or voice that plays or defines discernible beats of the rhythm. This kind of rhythm in music is called free rhythm, which basically means the voices flow through time, rather than conform to beats in a rhythmic pattern.
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Notes sung close together: Note also that the notes of the melody are very close together. In other words, one note is often followed by another note that is close in distance, such as going from the note C on the piano to the next note up, which is a D. It is not common in these chants for the singers to jump from the note C to the note G, which is five steps apart. This is considered too far of a leap.
Secular Music
Troubadors: Of course, music was not confined strictly to the Church. A tradition of troubadors and trouveres sprang up throughout Europe. These were poet-musicians who sometimes traveled about with their music or who simply stayed in one location where well-to-do patrons supported them. Guess what topic dominated most of the lyrics of the Troubadors. Of course it is love, of the unrequited variety. For instance, often times a man falls in love with a courtly woman above his own status. They never wrote out their music fully on paper, so it is difficult to re-create what their music sounded like. There are drawings from the period that show of the instruments they played. These were often string instruments.
Listening Example: Here is a composition by Bernart de Ventadorn
Bernart de Ventadorn
Bernart live in the late 12th Century and is unique among secular composers of the twelfth century in the amount of music which has survived: of his forty-five poems, eighteen have music intact, an unusual circumstance for a troubador composer. (Wikipedia).
The following link will take you to Spotify where you can listen to “Can vei la lauzeta mover.”
Note the following stylistic features:
- The texture (how the different parts of the music fit together) is homophonic, a single discernible melody with instrumental accompaniment. In that sense, it is very similar to early blues guitar and vocal style, as well as those of folk singers like Bob Dylan.
- The instrument is a string instrument. The melody simple.
- Translation of the lyrics:
- Mas greu veiretz fin' amansa
ses paor e ses doptansa,
c'ades tem om vas so c'ama, falhir,
per qu'eu no·m aus de parlar enardir. - But true love comes, not so lightly
Without fear and with no doubting,
We always fear that what we love may fail,
So I don't dare to stir myself to speak. - "Ab joi mou lo vers e·l comens", line 13; translation by James H. Donalson. [1] Links to an external site.
- Can vei la lauzeta mover
De joi sas alas contra·l rai,
Que s'oblid'e·s laissa chazer
Per la doussor c'al cor li vai,
Ai, tan grans enveya m'en ve
De cui qu'eu veya jauzïon. - When I behold the skylark move in perfect joy towards its love the sun, when I behold the skylark, growing drunk with joy, forget the use of wings, so that it topples from the height of heavens, I envy the bird's fate.
- "Can vei la lauzeta mover", line 1; translation from James Branch Cabell Links to an external site. The Cream of the Jest ([1917] 1972) p. 33.
- D'aisso's fa be femna parer
Ma domna, per qu'e·lh o retrai,
Car no vol so c'om deu voler,
E so c'om li deveda, fai. - This is how she shows herself a woman indeed,
My lady, and I reproach her for it:
She does not want what one ought to want,
And what she is forbidden to do, she does. - "Can vei la lauzeta mover", line 33; translation by Frederick Goldin, from Boris Ford (ed.) Medieval Literature: The European Inheritance (1983) p. 440.
- Chantars no pot gaire valer,
Si d'ins dal cor no mou lo chans!
Ni chans no pot dal cor mover,
Si no i es fin' amors coraus. - Singing cannot much avail, if from within the heart comes not the song; nor can the song come from the heart, unless there be there noble love, heartfelt.
- "Chantars no pot gaire valer", line 1; translation from Alan R. Press Anthology of Troubadour Lyric Poetry (1971) p. 67.
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Aisso non es amors; aitaus
No·n a mas lo nom e·l parven,
Que re non ama si no pren. - This is not love, such has only its name and semblance, which loves no thing unless it gains from it.