Power point 3: Medieval Secular Vocal Music

1. Music outside the church in the Middle Ages
Medieval Secular Vocal Music

2. Latin
•versus and conductus
•rhythmic, rhymed, often
attached to the liturgy as
background or processional
•Goliard songs
•“Bishop Goliard” mentor
of numbers of “Order of
Goliard” did not exist.
Goliards were actually
clerical students who wrote
satirical, and often
obscene, songs, sometimes
based on the texts of the
mass and hymns.

3. FRANCE
The earliest known French writings are from the 800s.

4. La Chanson de Roland
•Chanson de geste—song of heroic
deeds
•Early 11th century
•About 100 exist
•Performed by jongleur
•Jongleurs/ménstrels
•bottom of social scale
•wanderings contributed to
spread and survival of
medieval monophonic song
•Parisian jongleurs guild active
from 1120 to 1700s
•not composers
•Northern French

5. Troubadours
and
Trouvères
• 11th –13th Century poet-composers
• Often nobility
• songs:
• syllabic, melismas @ end of line
• short phrases, narrow range
• rhythm not indicated
• about 250 exist
South—Troubadours North—Trouvères
•canso
•pastorella
•alba
•tenso
•joc parti
•sirventes
Songs
•chanson
•pastourelle
•descort
•jeu parti
•chanson de toile
•lais
Dance songs
•balada
•dansa
•estampie
•carole
•ronde/rondel/rondelet
the canso and chanson are about courtly/chivalric love
the balada and dansa are about love, mention the
spring festival, and are strophic with a refrain

6. Bernart de
Ventadorn
(ca. 1130- ca.
1200)
Can vei la
lauzeta mover;
canso
troubadour
His parents were servants, possibly
bakers, at the Castle of Ventadour in
what is now southern France. He
worked at various courts in France
and England and died in a
monastery.

7. •King Richard the Lionheart (1157-1199)
•talented trouvère
•King of England 1189-1199
•was captured during the crusades—
legend has it that a fellow trouvère was
able to find him by means of a song the
two had coauthored.

8. Adam de la Halle
 ca. 1240—1288
 considered greatest trouvère
 monophonic and polyphonic
compositions
 chansons
 jeux-partis
 rondeaux
 motets
 plays w/music
 Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion
• spoken dialogue interspersed with
songs
• specified instrumentation
• Robins m’aime

9. Trobairitz
• women troubadours
• the only trobairitz poem
with music that has been
found is by Comtessa de Dia
– A chantar
Comtessa de Dia

10. German Minnesänger
• 12th-13th century poet-
musicians
• “one who sings about
courtly love”
• Bar form
– aab (stolen, stolen,
abgesang)
– Walther von der
Vogelweide
• Palästinalied
Walther von der Vogelweide

11. Spanish
Cantigas
•rulers traveled between France and Spain
•before 1225, much Iberian poetry written in the
Provençal language
•Cantigas de Santa Maria
•collection of Galician-Portuguese music prepared
under the direction of Alfonso X the Wise, King of
Castile and Léon
•Cantiga 159: Non sofre Santa Maria
•AbbaA form of later form fixes virelai/ballata

12. Italian Laude
• lauda
– songs of
wandering
penitents who
sought atonement
for their sins by
self-flagellation
– strophic

13. English Monophony
An English Scop
St. Godric’s hermitage
•before Norman Conquest:
•scop—court entertainer
•gleeman—traveling musician
•after Norman conquest:
•minstrels
•songs
•long narrative poems with harp
•St. Godric (d. 1170)
•Saxon Hermit
•earliest surviving vernacular English
songs
•(picture on right is Benedictine
Priory by River Wear in Durham,
England, where St. Godric was a
hermit)