Medieval Era Chapter 1 Outline
Medieval Era (600-1450)
I. Music of the Medieval World (“When God saw that many men were lazy, and gave themselves only with difficulty to spiritual reading, He wished to make it easy for them, and added the melody to the Prophet’s words, that all being rejoiced by the charm of music, should sing hymns to Him with gladness.” -St. John Chrysostom [345-407]. 1:53)
* A. Sacred Music (Gregorian Chant) o 1. An assemblage of a body of music into an organized liturgy associated with Pope Gregory the Great (reigned from 590-604.) 1:53 o 2. “Like the music of the Greeks and Hebrews [Jewish Shabat, Jewish service] from which it descended, Gregorian chant (also known as plainchant or plainsong) consists of a single-line …show more content…
Renaissance Musical Style o 1. “The Renaissance achieved an exquisite appreciation of a cappella music (a vocal work without instrumental accompaniment).” 1:68 o 2. A popular technique was imitative polyphony (musical motives wandering from vocal line to vocal line within the texture imitating one another so that the same theme or motive was heard now in one voice, then in another, and so on throughout the piece.) 1:68 o 3. “Secular music,… was divided between purely vocal works and those in which the singers were supported by instruments.” 1:68 o 4. The Renaissance leaned toward fuller chords, utilizing thirds and sixths (instead of mainly parallel fifths and octaves favored by Medieval composers) and more uses of dissonance. 1:68 o 5. Word painting was often used as a device to musically depict words or fragments of the text (such as dissonance with the word death, ascending lines with the word “Heaven”, descending lines with the word “Sigh.”) 1:68 o 6. Composers often used a cantus firmus, or fixed melody, in their works (“usually of very long notes and based on a fragment of Gregorian chant that served as the structural basis for a polyphonic composition.”) 1:68,
I. Music of the Medieval World (“When God saw that many men were lazy, and gave themselves only with difficulty to spiritual reading, He wished to make it easy for them, and added the melody to the Prophet’s words, that all being rejoiced by the charm of music, should sing hymns to Him with gladness.” -St. John Chrysostom [345-407]. 1:53)
* A. Sacred Music (Gregorian Chant) o 1. An assemblage of a body of music into an organized liturgy associated with Pope Gregory the Great (reigned from 590-604.) 1:53 o 2. “Like the music of the Greeks and Hebrews [Jewish Shabat, Jewish service] from which it descended, Gregorian chant (also known as plainchant or plainsong) consists of a single-line …show more content…
Renaissance Musical Style o 1. “The Renaissance achieved an exquisite appreciation of a cappella music (a vocal work without instrumental accompaniment).” 1:68 o 2. A popular technique was imitative polyphony (musical motives wandering from vocal line to vocal line within the texture imitating one another so that the same theme or motive was heard now in one voice, then in another, and so on throughout the piece.) 1:68 o 3. “Secular music,… was divided between purely vocal works and those in which the singers were supported by instruments.” 1:68 o 4. The Renaissance leaned toward fuller chords, utilizing thirds and sixths (instead of mainly parallel fifths and octaves favored by Medieval composers) and more uses of dissonance. 1:68 o 5. Word painting was often used as a device to musically depict words or fragments of the text (such as dissonance with the word death, ascending lines with the word “Heaven”, descending lines with the word “Sigh.”) 1:68 o 6. Composers often used a cantus firmus, or fixed melody, in their works (“usually of very long notes and based on a fragment of Gregorian chant that served as the structural basis for a polyphonic composition.”) 1:68,