Lesson 1: Historical and Cultural Background of

the Music of Medieval Period

Learning Targets

In this lesson, you should be able to:

● explain why culture and history are important in understanding music;
● enumerate and describe the instruments from Greek and Roman Medieval Music;
and
● articulate the functions of music during the middle ages for both Greece and Rome.

History and culture are two things that are very much intertwined when it comes to
understanding the development and evolution of many things in our lives. How much about
your history and culture do you know? How does this knowledge affect your own
experiences?

Let’s Warm Up!

Recall and list down five (5) favorite songs that you can still remember when you were in the
preschool. Also, list down five (5) of your favorite songs of today. Find a partner and discuss
the following questions:

1. Do you still like the music on your first list? Why or why not?
2. What is similar between your favorite songs before and now?
3. What is the difference between your favorite songs before and now?
4. Why are they different? Why are they similar?

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 Learn about It!

CULTURE AND HISTORY

Just like what you have discussed with your partner, our tastes in music are affected by our
history and the things around us. For the medieval times, the same thing is similar with how
music was developed. Both history and culture play a significant role in studying the roots of
our music. But before anything, it is important for us to discuss two words that are crucial to
understanding music history.
History is a chronological account of the past. These accounts are backed up by written
documents and other materials and accounts acquired in the process of investigation. The
tricky thing about history, however, is that it is shaped by people's views and upbringing, very
much like your taste in music, as we discussed during the warm-up exercises. This is where
culture comes in - being defined as a set of beliefs and values that are shared by a group of
people. Culture then encompasses things like visual arts, religion, language, music, and even
food! In that sense, knowing our history is very crucial to understanding our culture, and of
course, our music.

MEDIEVAL MUSIC
When it comes to Western music, Medieval music is one of the earliest music that the world is
familiar with. Medieval music pertains to the music written after the fall of the Roman empire
during the Middle Ages up until about the mid-1400s when the Renaissance period begins.
There are few written sources that we have for these days. Written manuscripts were very
limited during this time because parchment was expensive and only the wealthy institutions
had the means to have these created. These institutions were mainly the church and of
course, the royalty.

GENRES
Considering that the church and the royalty were the usual patrons of music at this time, it
was easy to segregate medieval music into sacred and secular music. Sacred music pertains

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to music that was used within the realm of religion, more specifically, the Roman Catholic
church which was a massive force during the medieval period. Secular music pertained to all
the music that was not sung within the contains of the church.

THE CHANT TRADITION

Chants or plainsong was one of the earliest forms of Sacred Music. This was greatly
influenced by the practice of the Jews, singing psalms in the synagogues. These chants
developed in different parts of Europe, all apart from each other.
Spain developed the Mozarabic chant which strangely resembled North African music. Milan
would have its Ambrosian chant and Benevento, another liturgical center in Italy developed
the Beneventan chant. Gaul would have the Gallican chants, and Britain and Ireland had
Celtic Chants. It wouldn't be much later that the Roman Catholic church would standardize all
these chants into what we will soon learn to be the Gregorian Chants.

SECULAR MUSIC
Royal courts also had entertainers during this time, and gypsies also traveled providing songs
used mostly for social events like love songs, drinking songs, dances and even those about the
ongoing crusades. The wandering minstrels such as the gypsies used instruments like the
early violin, bagpipes, cornets (the earlier version of today's trumpet) and the lute- a plucked
string instrument that resembles the guitar.

Check Your Understanding

A. Answer the Following questions:

1. Name the instruments that were used by the wandering minstrels hen they traveled.
2. What are the two umbrella genres used to classify medieval music?
3. Which religion was very prominent during the time of the Middle Ages?
4. What was the earliest form of sacred music called?
5. What do you call the gypsies that travelled Europe during the medieval times?

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B. Do the following tasks:
1. Draw a scene in the life of a court musician in the space given below.
2. Summarize what you have learned about sacred music by making a mind map.
3. Describe what you understand about culture in two sentences.
4. Use five words to describe what you understand medieval music to be.
5. Explain why there was little written documentation about the middle ages.

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Lesson 2: Gregorian Chants

Learning Targets

In this lesson, you should be able to:

● explain the relevance of the development of a system of writing down music;
● describe what Gregorian chants are;
● read and perform simple neume notation; and
● classify gregorian chants according to syllabication, melodic line, and texture.

Let’s Warm Up!

PASS THE MESSAGE

1. Group yourselves into groups of 4 or 5. Form a straight line.
2. The teacher then whispers a tongue twister to the first member of the group. The
message should be passed, one person at a time, until it reaches the very last person of
the group.
3. The last person then, writes the message he or she heard on the board. Check if the
tongue twister is still the same.
4. Discuss difficulties the group had in getting the message across.

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 Learn about It!

THE BEGINNINGS OF WRITTEN NOTATION

Much like the difficulties you had in getting the same message across, one of the challenges of
the ancient times was that music was passed down through word of mouth. One of the most
invaluable developments during the Medieval period was the development of a system of
writing for music. This allowed music to be passed on with a little more precision and accuracy
rather than being learned merely by ear. Music went from something that was purely heard as
something that was also seen. This development was brought about by some political and
military conditions of the time, which transferred the center of Christendom from Rome to
other parts of Europe. It was when this migration happened that the development of the
notation system occurred.

GREGORIAN CHANTS
The material which was notated was the very first big body of work notated in the history of
Western music repertoire. These works were called Gregorian chants - unaccompanied
songs used in the Roman Catholic Church.

Fig. 2. Gregorian Chants were named after Pope Gregory.

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These chants were monophonic, which means that the music was composed of a single
musical line. This was because they believed that the purity of the single musical line
encouraged the listener to focus on the divine without distractions. The chants were in the
Latin, the language used by the Roman Catholic Church.
These chants are named after Pope Gregory, although he has almost nothing to do with
these chants as they became widespread 200 years after he had become pope. Upon the time
of the migration, those in power used his name to gain a false following, claiming that the
Gregorian Chants were the same as the Old Roman Chants which were used before the
church had left Rome. These Gregorian Chants then easily replaced the other chants that
were being used in different parts of Europe.
There are different qualities that give Gregorian Chants a distinctive musical flavor. One is its
use of different modes. Quite similar to the concept of our major and minor scales, Gregorian
chants usually use one of 8 modes- each a unique combination of intervals which is the
difference between two pitches/sounds. The chants do not have a specific rhythm and are
meant to flow like they are spoken. They can also be sung in any comfortable key, so long as
the intervals are retained. These chants, as they were sung by the clergy, were usually sung by
men.

NOTATION
The Gregorian staff is almost the same as the staff that we use to notate music today, except
it contains one line and space less. The pitches are represented by neumes which can be put
on top of each other which stands for the sequence upon which they are sung.

FORM
There are many ways to categorize Gregorian Chants.
If we put into consideration how many neumes or notes/pitches are assigned to a single
syllable, we categorize them categorize them as either syllabic, neumatic or melismatic chants.
Syllabic chants will usually have one neume assigned to a syllable. Neumatic chants will
predominantly have about 2-3 notes per syllable. Lastly, melismatic chants will range from
five to up to thirty or more neumes per syllable.

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The Gregorian chants can also be classified by their melodies. Recitative melodies have one
pitch that is dominant in the chant. This pitch is called the reciting pitch. The chants that are
generally more complex (and mostly melismatic) are considered to be free melodies.
Another way that we can categorize the Gregorian chants is through its texture. Antiphonal
Chants are chants that are usually sung by two choirs- the first reading a psalm verse, the
second singing a common response or an antiphon. Responsorial Chants, on the other hand,
were sung in alternation by a soloist and a choir, with the psalm verses being read by the
soloist and the response called the responses sung by the choir.

Check Your Understanding

A. Matching type: draw a line between the first and second column to match the following
terms to their definitions.
Column A Column B

1. melismatic chants chants involving two choirs

2. antiphonal chants Standard chants of the Roman Catholic Church
3. gregorian Chant chants that have more than 6 pitches/syllable
4. neumes a unique combination of interval
5. mode represents pitches in gregorian notation

B. Create a poster about gregorian notation in response to the following questions:

1. Draw notational examples.

2. What do you call the pitch representations?
3. How many lines and spaces are in the Gregorian staff?
4. How do you read the Gregorian staff?
5. What is its difference to modern notation?

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Lesson 3: Adam de la Halle and His Music

Learning Targets

In this lesson, you should be able to:

● explain what troubadours are;
● differentiate the different music of the troubadours;
● complete a timeline of the life of Adam de la Halle; and
● create and perform at least one of their works about their knowledge in formes
fixes.

We had discussed that to understand music, we too must understand history and culture. We
have already discussed the medieval music concerning religion, but what other functions
did music serve during the middle ages?

Let’s Warm Up!

Listen to Adam de la Halle's "Fi maris." List down five (5) specific similarities and (5)
differences between Gregorian chants which you have just learned about and what you listen
to.

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 Learn about It!
TROUBADOURS
Considered to be the lyric poets of France, Spain, and Italy, troubadours were prominent
during the late 11th to the 13th century. Even if their music was primarily for entertainment,
they were very influential people- with the freedom of speech that they had, they were
favored by courts during this time and were even involved in political undertakings.
The troubadours were traveling musicians. They went around major cities in Europe and sang
songs mostly about courtly love. Most of them were of noble descent and knights that had
been part of the crusades.

Fig. 3. Troubadours are traveling musicians.

Stemming from the Occitan word trobar which meant "to find," troubadours were the ones
that wrote new poetry. Much of the works of the troubadours were preserved in writing in a
manuscript called chansonniers.
Troubadour music was known to be like Gregorian chants, monophonic. They worked with
different forms of poetry. The Canso was the most common, with five or six stanzas. The
dansa or balada was a song that they used for dance and had a refrain, and the pastorela

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was a love song from a night to a shepherdess. There were also debates between two poets
called jeux partis. However, while the troubadours themselves usually wrote the poetry, it
was rare that they used their music. Some troubadours borrowed tunes from the music they
heard in the streets and some even from Latin sacred melodies.

Adam de la Halle
The music you have just listened to is by one of the last French troubadours, Adam de la
Halle. The exact date of his birth is not necessarily known but is estimated to be sometime
within the year 1276. He was also known by the name Adam le Bossu (Adam the
hunchback), he studied at the Cistercian Abbey of Vaucelles to become a priest before he fell
in love and married a woman named Maroie. He was born in Arras, in Northern France. He
studied in Paris before returning to his hometown, and then went to Italy in 1280 where he
served Roberto II, who was then the count of Artois. He also worked for the Court of the King
of the Two Sicilies in Naples, Carlos of Anjou. He passed away in 1288.
Adam de la Halle was a master of the jeux parti, but de la Halle was different from his fellow
troubadours. He was the first to write troubadour music that was polyphonic rather than
monophonic. This meant that the music was made up of two (or more) different musical lines
that were performed simultaneously.
He created 36 chansons or songs in the troubadour tradition including 17 jeux partis. He
was also known for his longer works- his pastorela Le jeu de Robin et Marion was considered
to be the first ever opera to be written.

FORMES FIXES
He was also the first to write what we call the formes fixes or principal forms of music and
poetry in polyphony.
During this period, three of the forms were very predominant: 1) the Rondeau, 2) the ballade;
and 3) the virelai.
To understand these principal musical forms, let's set a legend for the music:
● A, B, C are musical phrases. If we use the capital letter, that means that the lyrics of the
phrase are repeated. The smaller case a or b indicates that the text is different, but the
musical phrase is the same.

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 ● A rondeau is one of the longer and more complexes of the formes fixes. It follows the
pattern ABaAabAB. A ballade uses shorter pattern: aabC and, the virelai uses the
pattern AbbaA.

One of the most famous rondeaus of Adam de la Halle is entitled “Tant con je vivrai.”

Try It Yourself
Listen to the music and look at the lyrics stated below. Mark the parts as A,B, a or b

Tant con je vivrai

N’amerai autrui
que vous, Ja n’en partirai
Tant con je vivrai
Ains vous servirai
Loi aument mis m’i sui tous
Tant con je vivrai
N’amerai autrui que vous.

Check Your Understanding

A. Write T if the statement given below is true, or an F it is false.

1. Troubadours wrote about courtly love.
2. Adam de Halle was different because he wrote monophonic troubadour music.
3. Troubadours always write their music.
4. Pastorelas are love songs from a knight to a shepherdess.
5. The Principal forms of music and poetry in polyphony are called virelai.

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B. Answer the following questions:
1. Create a brief timeline of the life of Adam de la Halle.
2. In your own words, what are troubadours?
3. What is the difference between monophonic and polyphonic music?
4. Give one (1) example each of monophonic and polyphonic that we have
discussed in this lesson.
5. What are the different formes fixes? Differentiate them from each other.

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