PLAINCHANT: MUSIC OF THE CHURCH (sacred music)
• Pope Gregory the Great (r. 590-604)
o Codified church music; liturgy
§ Liturgy: set order of church services
§ Music at core of Christian prayer
o More than 3,000 Gregorian melodies
§ Nearly all composed anonymously
§ Belief in divine composition
§ Greek, Hebrew, and Syrian influences
• Plainchant, Gregorian Chant
o Single-line melody: monophonic texture
o Follows inflections of Latin text; free-flowing, non-metric
o Avoids wide leaps; gentle contours
o Text settings: syllabic, neumatic, melismatic
o Early chant: oral tradition
o Early notations: neumes suggest melodic contours
o Modal: modes lack pull to tonic, predecessors of major and minor scales
THE MASS
• Reenactment of Christ’s last supper
o Most solemn ritual of the catholic church
o Mass liturgy:
§ Proper: variable portions
§ Ordinary: fixed portions
LIFE AND MUSIC IN THE MEDIEVAL MONASTERY
• Monasteries and other religious communities
o Religious seclusion, available to men and women
o Devoted to prayer, scholarship, preaching, charity, healing the sick
o Arduous discipline
o Daily Offices, singing of psalms; fostered development of worship through music
• A song for worship by Hildegard
o Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179)
§ Renowned poet and prophet woman
§ Daughter of a noble German couple
§ Given to the church as a tithe
§ Founded monastery in Germany
§ Highly original musical style:
• Resembles Gregorian chant
• Expressive leaps
• Melismas (a lot of notes per syllabus): convey meaning of the
words
• Poetry: brilliant imagery, creative language
EARLY POLIPHONY
• Single most important feature in development of Western music
• European polyphony distinctive
o Romanesque era
o Notated polyphony emerged
o Precise rhythm, pitch indicated: more exact notational system developed
• Gothic era
o Individual composers recognized
• Organum
o Earliest form of polyphony: second voice added to Gregorian melody
o Polyphonic art blossomed
§ Greater independence of voices
o Notre dame composers at forefront
§ Léonin
• First composer of polyphonic music whose name we know
• Compiled Great Book of Organum
§ Pérotin
• Léonin successor
