Historical and Cultural Background

of
the Music of Medieval Period
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?
 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.

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.
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
 THE CHANT TRADITION
• Chants or plainsong was one of the earliest forms of Sacred Music.
• 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

• 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.
Gregorian chant
• violins, bagpipes, cornets, lute
• Sacred and secular
• Roman Catholicism
• chants/plainsong
• wandering minstrels
 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?