MUS 2331 Forms and Styles I: Middle Ages and Renaissance

The First Literate Repertory in Western Music

Music of Ancient Greece
Medieval Liturgy 1: Gregorian Chant

Ancient and Preliterate Music

- Archeological evidence: Illustrations of music making, such as those
found on prehistoric cave paintings, Egyptian murals
- Biblical Descriptions: written descriptions of music making
- Ancient Greece: Greek pottery with musicians and instruments
o Homer, The Iliad: Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of
Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans
Ancient Greece
- Pitch-specific notation
- Letters and symbols
- The Epitaph of Seikolos [Anthology 1-1]
o probably from the first century BCE, survives in complete for on a
tombstone
o Symbols are used to represent pitch and rhythm
o By an unknown composer (Seikolos?)
o Text: epigram (simple poem)
o Single symbol indicates pitch and rhythm
o Diatonic melody
o Solo melody or accompanied piece?
No indications on the tombstone, but visual evidence from
ancient Greek artifacts often depict instruments
Aulos
Cithara
- Philosophical writings about music
o Music has influence on humans
o Ethical and moral uses of music
o Plato, Republic because more than anything else rhythm and
harmony find their way to the innermost soul and take strongest
hold upon it and to control the people, control the music
- Theories of Music
o Theories on pitch, rhythm and ethos of music
Transmission of Ancient Greek Theory
- Theories of Music
o Pythagoras (6th Century BCE)
Harmonic ratios
Discussed physical properties of music, noting which were
consonant and dissonant

o St. Augustine (354-430) (391 CE)

Wrote about the rhythmic aspects of music in De Musica
the art of measuring well
o Boethius (ca. 480 ca. 524)
De institutione musica (On the Organization of Music)
Most studied in the Middle Ages
Lays out the premise of abstract music (which derives from
the followers of Plato): called the doctrine of ethos
Musica instrumentalis (of the instruments audible
music)
Musica humana (of the human constitution)
Musica mundana (of the cosmos or spheres)
These ideas influenced Western thought for centuries
Historical Imagination
- Development of Early Notation
o iatonic pitch set inspired by Greek system, but for pitch only
o Notated music of the early Middle Ages is predominantly sacred.
It is known as monophonic chant.
o Notated chant represents only a small part of musical life in this
period.
- Early Christian Church
o Monophonic chant
o Latin
o The first great surviving Western repertory is Gregorian chant.
Gregorian chant was one aspect of a life devoted to God,
not concert or party music
Gregorian chant in the context of its original
contemporaries
Christian Beginnings
- Western Roman Church
o Roman Chant
o Roman Liturgy
o Charlemagnes centralization of authority extend to the church,
which resulted in suppressing alternative rites and establishing
the Roman rite (which its constituent chants) as the correct
way
o The words of the roman liturgy were easily codified, but the
melodic aspects of chant required notation in order to spread the
Roman versions of chants
The legend of St. Gregory
- Pope Gregory I (Pope from 590-604)

o Divinely-inspired chant melodies

o Gregorian chant, as it came to be called, became the best chant,
and was unchangeable (divine)
Standardization of Roman Chant
o Monasteries and convents arose very early in the life of the
Christian church
o The practices of chanting psalms in monastic settings gradually
developed into Gregorian chant, as speaking the texts in a
heightened pattern (cantillation) assisted in both memory and
focus
o These chants were monophonic and sung by the entire
community of worshippers, not a trained choir

The Development of the Liturgy

Two parts of the liturgy: the Mass and Offices
- The Offices (or Hours)
o Eight standard services: Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None,
Vespers, Compline
o Each Office contained at least:
Recitation of the 150 psalms over the course of a week
1 Hymn
Antiphons (newly created chant to introduce psalms)
Responds
Canticles (Lauds, Vespers, Compline) from the N.T.
o The yearly calendar of the Office was organized into feasts
commemorating different events and individuals
Temporal cycle (Christmas cycle)
Sanctoral cycle (Easter cycle)
- The Mass
o Public re-enactment of Christs last supper
o The most elaborate music of the Christian Church is associated
with the Mass
o Not full psalms
o Proper (words change based on feast day, liturgical calendar,
etc.)
o Ordinary (words remain the same)
Sung by the choir and grew as a fixed cycle for each mass
Introit: antiphon + 1 verse as we enter the church,
come into the service, following the introit at the
core, the mass proceeds to:
Kyrie [Anthology 1-4a, b] is a genre & mass
movement
o 3-part form, with each part being repeated 3
times

Gloria [Anthology 1-4c] reading from Pauls Epistles,

Gradual, Alleluia (tract during Lent), reading from the
Gospels, ask mercy but to glorify god, the only time
we dont have the Gloria is during lent (we are not
going to have a text during the repent season),
Easter Sunday = Gloria returns
o Longer than the Kyrie, more neumatic (like the
antiphon), long melismas
Credo [Anthology 1-4d] offertory
o More syllabically inclined, more stylistically
derived than the Gloria, more care with the
individual words, seeing a simplification in
terms of declaration style
Sanctus [Anthology 1-4e] canon and pater noster
o More recitation style, hovering on one or two
notes for the most part, especially after the 3rd
repetition of Sanctus, some melismas
Agnus Dei [Anthology 1-4f] communion, ite, missa
est
o Neumatic style of singing, declamation that has
some multiple syllable words, multiple note
groupings/syllable
These were not sung by the average public, sung by
a group of trained singers, can see that in the
complex nature of the chants. The more melismas
more professional singers, trained to read latin,
trained to read music notation & sing monks or
nuns or young boys at monastery, young girls at
convent (early schools in many ways)

Chant Notation
- Neumes
o To indicate accent, which implied direction
Prosodic accents (acute, grave, circumflex)
o Carolingian neumes indicated the contour and placement of
notes in relation to text syllables (C vs. F)
o In the early eleventh century, neumes were placed on lines and
spaces. We call these diastematic neumes
- Guido of Arezzo (ca. 990-1033)
o Micrologus (ca. 1028)
o Earliest guide to staff notation (4 lines)
o sight singing
Ut queant laxis (hymn)

Outlines the hexachord (6-note diatonic segment) ut-re-mifa-sol-la

Solmization (solfege)

Hexchords
o G (durum), C (nautral) and F (mollis)
Concerned with the placement of semitones
Semi-tone is always found between mi and fa
Guidonian Hand
Quick way to teach sight singing
o After Guido, square or quadratic notation became standard
(beginning in the twelfth century). This notation can be found in
the Liber usualis (book of chant)

Modal Theory
Psalm Tones
- Outline the basic functions of singing psalms. There are eight plus the
tonus peregrinus (migrating tone). They consist primarily of a
primary reciting tone (tenor) and ending note (finalis).
- Mode indicates not simply a sale, but also melodic characteristics
Tonaries
- Collections of antiphons grouped according to the psalm tones with
which they were associated are known as tonaries. These emerged in
the ninth century
o These groupings were practical because they assisted in group
singing of the psalms in the correct patterns
o The existence of tonaries means that the person who put them
together had to deal with a large body of music and organize it
o The result was neither Greek nor Roman, but Frankish (after the
Franks, Charlemagne being the most famous)
Mode
- Means of classification
- Chant classification by mode and its correspondence with psalm tones
involves the recognition of the range (ambitus)
o Chants are broken down further based on the range + final
o Those that end on the final are authentic.
o Those that emphasize the final in the middle of their range are
plagal.
- MODE IS DETERMINED BY FINAL NOTE + RANGE.
- Eg. D final note = mode 1 or mode 2 (dorian or hypodorian),
whether or not it is 1 or 2 is determined by the range of the
piece (if it goes to the A below, hypodorian, but if it is goes
from the final d up the octave dorian or mode 1). Go for the

range that is most represented if both are present. Mostly in

___.
Eight Medieval Church Modes
- The names of the modes are included in boethius writings
- Pitch is non-standard (un-fixed) in medieval music, so we should not
associate modes with pitches found on the piano
- Notation indicates the arrangements of half-steps and whole-steps

Some terms:
Ordinary: texts and movements of the mass that remain the same for each
and every mass ordinary in the sense that they do not change (unchanged,
staple, standard)
- Speak these texts every single mass
- In the 9th century, Franks gave standardized melodies
- The melodies can vary but the text itself does not change
Antiphon: adding an extra flourish to a pedantic chant
Antiphonal: singing in an antiphonal manner = two parts that answer each
other (usually two choirs on opposite ends of the church and they answer
each other, verse vs. verse, alternation)
Medieval Liturgy 4: Hymns, Tropes and Marian Antiphons
Beginnings of Polyphony: Organum
Franks concerned with enhancing and adding to the Roman Liturgy. One
way of altering the mass and offices more appealing = the sequence.
- Sequential: roman practice of extending the melisma on ia of
Alleluia. Amalar adapted this to other festive chants
- Opposition: agobard of Lyons (contemporary of Amalar) complains
about the virtuosity of singers
- Sequence: a new genre of chant

o Sequences initially were added melismas, replacing the

traditional jubilus
o They had internal repetitions, which made them easier to
memorize (like the melodies of Graduals 1-3a and b)
o Eventually new words were added to the musical additions
(making them syllabic chants)
o Sequences began to stand alone as musical compositions and
were rather popular. By the renaissance, they were so numerous
that the Counter-Reformation reformers (16th C) cut the number
to four.
o Not everybody appreciated the flamboyant music during services
taking away from the words of the gospel words, unnecessary
opportunity for singers to show off
o Agobard of Lyons didnt think they could keep adding
sequences, and eventually in the 16th century, they were cut
entirely from the literature go from having 100s of sequences
to having 4 sequences that were allowed.
o 4 sequences for: Easter, Pentagos, Corpos Kristie, Mass for the
Dead/Funeral
Frankish Additions to the Chant Repetory
Notker Balbulus = the stammerer early 10th century composer
- Biographer of Charlemagne and composer of sequences
- Added text to long melismas to existing chants, created new syllabic
sequences
- Anthology [1-5ab]
o Victimae pascali laudes anonymous tribute to a german monk
o Dies irae Thomas of Challela
Versus: rhyming, metrical verse (not prose sequence)
Clear repetition scheme: AABBCC (double vesicle structure
AA BB CC DD etc) that is repeated three times (same music
being used for two lines of text in succession)
Overall form: AA BB CC
AA BB CC
AABBCdd
Hypodorian (mode 2) lower than mode 1, darker, more
sombre, appropriate to a text that reads dreaded day the
day of ire the world shall melt in fire etc it is a funeral
chant, it is dark, the mode reflects this mode is an
effective tool because it has expressive qualities
- Sequences tend to be in a regular kind of form. ABCABC
- Also some internal repetition
5th line of staff is added near the end of the renaissance for several
centuries there were only 4 lines.
Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179)

Abbess, composer, author

She wrote a large amount of poetry and music, expressing mystic
visions
o Many of her compositions refer to the Virgin Mary or texts from
the Song of Songs (canticles)
o Imagery dominants many of the texts that she set imagery
about love, about devotion, woman as a dove, ideas of purity,
ideas of heaven vs. earth, musical representation of these things
in her works
Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum
o Collections of sequences, antiphons, responsories, hymns and
Kyries, all composed by her
Columba aspexit (the dove looked in) [anthology 1-6]
o Genre: sequence
o Text: long text, ten verses,
o Demonstrates aspects of her melodic style, including wide
ranges and intervallic leaps, irregular syllable count and
neumatic declamation on key words
o Form: Double versicle form, but not the same style
as other
sequences (dies irae)
o Varied repetition style of this sequence is also typical of
hildegards works, her A and her A are not the exact same
melody
This distinguishes her sequences from other medieval
sequences (which have LITERAL repetition)
o Compare the second to the fourth system: towards the ends of
her phrases try to bring closure
o Lose form of the paired versicle structure is what sets her apart
from other composers, was writing them for her own convent and
for her own expression
o Female voice, higher range
o Joined by other female voices in unison
o Overall melodic contour of the chant much more broad in terms
of the range that it flourishes, but also the intervals that it uses
more leaps (wider intervals) for expressive purposes
o Mysticism about her instead of strictly liturgic music, her style
was happier than most Gregorian chants
o If she says she had a mystical revelation we dont judge, we
accept that it was divinely inspired
o