#from a history of western music by burkholder grout and palisca

[classical-crap]

imagine having one of these bad boys in your house

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Project 1: A timeline of Medieval music

590-604: Liturgical chant begins to assume its definitive form under the pontificate of Pope Gregory I. Pre-existing melodies are collected in liturgical texts (Antiphonarium cento) as part of a collective, largely anonymous enterprise. (John the Deacon, writing in a biography in 873, propogates the myth that Pope Gregory I created musical notation and was the prinicpal composer of Gregorian Chant).

c. 7th Century: The Schola Cantorum in Rome is established, its role being to sing when the pope officiates at observances. The Schola sends cantors (ecclesiastical singers) to various countries in Europe. (One notable example being cantors accompanying St Augustine to Britain).

747: The second Council of Cloveshoe takes place in Anglo-Saxon Britain. Subsequently, all churches are obliged to sing plainchant in accordance with a visiting cantor from Rome.

c. 754: Pope Stephen II visits Pepin III, king of the Franks, leading to the inauguration of the Carolingian dynasty and a strong political and military alliance between the two. Pepin invades Italy, defending Rome from the Lombards, a Germanic tribe. He subsequently orders the use of Roman liturgy and chant in Frankish domains.

8th Century onwards: Neumes - the system of musical notation that existed before five-line staff notation - start to appear within Carolignian domains. The Frankish adaptation of Roman chant is imported back to Rome in this form. 780s onwards: The Carolignian Empire begins to consolidate and centralise power within its domains, leading to a period of increased cultural activity - the Carolingian Renaissance - and the importing of architecture, manuscript illustration and various administrative, legal and canonical practices from Italy. Charlemagne establishes courts at Aachen and Metz, the latter becoming the centre of Gregorian music in Europe. c. 781: Charlemagne invites Alciun (Albinius of York) to Aachen to establish a cathedral school. Alcuin devises a currciulum of seven ‘liberal arts’, which includes music. 789: Charlemagne issues the Admonito Generalis (”General Advisory”) to the Frankish clergy on 23rd March, ordering the clergy to replace the indigineous liturgy of northern churches (”Gallican” rite) with texts and melodies from the Roman liturgy. Cantors are sent from Rome to teach chant to the Franks, due to the absence of any means of notation.

800: Pope Leo III crowns Charlemagne the “temporal” ruler of the Holy Roman Empire on Christmas day.

c. 9th Century: Two anonymous treatises - Musica enchiriadis and Schola enchiriadis - illustrate how a melody can be doubled in parallel consonant intervals (a practice known as ‘Organum); an anonymous treatise, Alia musica, establishes the Greek nomenclature of church modes (e.g. Dorian, Lydian, etc.). c. 843: Aurelian of Réôme completes his treatise, Musica Disciplina, which emphasises the role of the ‘tonic’ in music. 843: Louis the Pious, son of Charlemagne, dies, leading to the eventual division of the Carolingian Empire. c. 880: Hucbald, a Frankish music theorist and monk, completes De harmonica institutione, the earliest treatise to use the letters of the alphabet to names notes.

c. 10th Century: Liturgical dramas begin to appear in written sources.

c. 901: Regino of Prüm, a benedictine monk, compiles one of the most extensive of the earliest tonaries, liturgical books which list various items of Gregorian chant according to the tonus (mode) of their melodies.

973: The Counts of Poitou assume the title of ‘Duke’ and assert dominion over the region of Aquitane (in Southern France). It is during this period of independence that courtly poetic and musical traditions arise.

c. 1000: An anonymous Milanese treatise, Dialogus de Musica, establishes the concept of octave equivalency.

c. 1028: The monk of Guido of Arezzo completes the Micrologus, a treatise featuring the earliest guide to staff notation. Subsequently, neumes start to be arranged diastematically (where the pitch of a note is represented by its vertical position on the page).

1050-1300: Cathedral schools are established throughout Western and Central Europe. The popuation of Europe also triples during this time; 1200 onwards: Independent schools are established for laymen, leading to a large increase in rates of literacy amongst the non-clerical population in Europe.

During this time, in regions such as Aquitane in France, versus and conductus are composed. These are forms of Latin song which are set to newly composed melodies not derived from plainsong.

Various forms of vernacular song (i.e. not written in Latin) are composed during this time - such as epic, lyric and narrative poerms - and professional musicians begin to appear, including bards, jongleurs and minstrels.

The most significant works of vernacular song during this period are composed by troubadours (in Southern France, in the language of Occitan) and trouvères (in Northern France, in Old French). Their songs are preserved in chansonniers (songbooks).

c. 1160: Construction begins on the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.

c. 1170: The Codex Calixtinus, a manuscript containing examples of Aquitanian polyphony, is compiled in France and is eventually sent to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain.

1208: Pope Innocent III declares a crusade against the Albigensians in Southern France, leading to the dispersion of troubadours from the region.

c. 1270: Hieronymus de Moravia introduces the term cantus firmus to denote an existing melody - such as plainchant - on which a new polyphonic work is based. c. 1280: Franco of Cologne sets out the system of Franconian Notation in the treatise, Ars cantus mensurabilis, the first to indicate the relative durations of notes by their shapes.

c. 1285: The treatise Anonymous IV is written, which gives an account of how a more ornate style of polyphony, associated with the Notre Dame cathedral, arises from the work of two figures, Leoninus and Petronius.

c. 1310: Philippe de Vitry, a French composer, initiates the Ars Nova, a new French musical style. His innovations include duple division of note values and the use of mensuration signs, symbols which are precursors to modern time signatures. References:

Taruskin, R. (2005). The Oxford history of western music; Volume 1: The earliest notations to the sixteenth century. Oxford University Press.

Donald Jay Grout, J  Peter Burkholder and Palisca, C.V. (2010). A history of western music. New York: W.W. Norton.‌

Anselm Hughes (1978). The new Oxford History of music. 2, Early medieval music up to 1300. London ; New York ; Toronto: Oxford University Press.‌

[musicwritings]

Italian ballata

A common polyphonic secular form of song during the Medieval and Renaissance periods with three parts: the represa (refrain with three lines), piedi (“feet” or a verse with two lines/couplets), and volta (“turning” and same music as the ripresa but with new words). It may be labeled as “AB cdcd ab AB” (or AbbaA for short). The ballata is Italian which corresponds in form with the French virelai. Another close relation is the French ballade, which originated with a similar form but developed differently. In other words, the Italian ballata is similar to the thirteenth century dance songs called the formes fixes (fixed forms) which later included the French poetry and songs of the rondeau, the ballade, and the virelai. Other sources of evolution into the form may come from older French ballades or Provençal baladas and dansas. Its first appearance in the fourteenth-century in the Rossi Codex—the earliest extant collection (between 1330 and 1340-45) of Italian secular polyphony containing twenty-nine pieces. Though they are similar in form and music, the Italian ballata was not dependent on the French models. The French virelai, for example, only came into its own as an independent form in the works of Machaut. Apposed to its counterpart, the ballata became so popular with Italian composers, that it almost completely replaced the older forms of secular polyphony. Instrumentation includes the voice and a few instruments which may include percussion. An example is Francesco Landini’s Non avrà ma’ pietà.

Sources:

Medieval Music by Richard Hoppin

Ideas and Styles in the Western Musical Tradition by Douglass Seaton

9th edition of A History of Western Music edited by J. Peter Burkholder, Donald Jay Grout, and Claude V. Palisca

3rd Edition, Volume 1 of Norton Antohology of Music edited by Claude V. Palisca

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A History…

[musicwritings]

Hildegard von Bingen

Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) is one of the most important figures in the Middle Ages. She has more extant chants than any other composer of this time and interestingly was rediscovered in the late twentieth century. Not only a composer, Hildegard was also an herbalist (another name for a doctor), mystic, theologian, and administrator. She wrote extensively in all of these fields with scientific and medical treatises, letters, prophecies, and even developing her own language with literature in the dialect. She could be a part of this intellectual life because of the support the convent provided. Instruction included learning Latin, composition, all of which was a rarity for women of the time. The name “von Bingen” means “from [the town] Bingen” which is a German town along the Rhine River Valley. Throughout her life, Hildegard did not travel beyond twenty miles outside of Bingen. There is a collection of her writings and music which is called the Riesenkodex. In this there are two collections of musical works including 43 antiphons, 18 responsories, 7 sequences, 4 hymns, 5 other chants and the major work Ordo virtutum. Written around 1152, Ordo is the earliest surviving music-drama to which we know the composer as well as a large work not connected with the liturgy. There are eighty-two songs which can be read and transcribed to modern notation. This is a morality drama with allegorical characters including Virtues, Prophets, and (the only spoken part) the Devil. The music is monophonic with responses; that is, solo and then chorus. A problem that arises with this work is that it is unknown if the performance had instruments involved, though it is likely there were portative organs creating a drone during the chants. One interesting feature to point out is that these songs are sung like Gregorian chant with a close relation to the fixed paraphrase psalms of the church. The songs contrast the regular Gregorian modes, as they are written for women’s voices. Her songs are not typical of plainchant, but rather unique in the way of melodic patterns in various modal positions, allowing for internal variation. Regularly her music would be labeled as heresy, though her music was derived by “visions” and therefore deemed as Divine. There are many theories as to how Hildegard gained these visions; these range from migraines to eating moldy rye. She wrote three literary works involving her visions, one even describing Heaven. Ordo virtutum as well as her other works were widely dispersed, even reaching to the city of Rome. An important form of this time that Hildegard succeeded well at was the Sequence. This form of music is an large development in the history of the musical form (rhymed pairs of lines that shared music in the pattern A BB CC DD and so on). In her life, she founded two monasteries and was the abbess (head nun). She was very involved in politics and diplomacy, dealing with popes, emperors, kings, and archbishops.

Sources:

- 8th Edition of Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians edited by Nicolas Slonimsky

- 9th edition of A History of Western Music edited by J. Peter Burkholder, Donald Jay Grout, and Claude V. Palisca

- Ideas and Styles in the Western Musical Tradition by Douglass Seaton