1. PRE BAROQUE MUSIC
GOTHIC,MIDDLE AGES AND
ANTIQUITY
PREPARED BY: ROMMEL ORBILLO

2. The Gothic Era
 The later Middle Ages or Gothic
Era, which lasted from 1150 to
1450, saw the rise of music with
multiple voices called polyphonic
music. Harmonies that were formed
by the combining of melodies were
based on the lowest and most
fundamental intervals in the harmonic
series which are octaves, fifths, and
fourths. The music sounded austere.

3.  Trouble in the church gave rise to
secular or non-religious music
performed by minstrels and
troubadours who traveled from court
to court to bring the news and
entertain with their music. These
visits might be compared to the
modern concert tour.

4.  Important composers of the period
included John Dunstable (1370-
1453), Guillaume Duffay (1400-
1474), Jean Ockeghem (d. 1495), and
Jacob Obrecht (d. 1505). The Ars Nova
was the culmination of centruies of
musical development and the
transition into the Renaissance
period.

5. Medieval music
 Mediaeval music is Western
music written during the Middle Ages.
This era begins with the fall of the
Roman Empire and ends sometime in
the early fifteenth
century. Establishing the end of the
mediaeval era and the beginning of
the Renaissance is difficult; the usage
in this article is the one usually
adopted by musicologists.

6.  Instruments used to perform medieval
music still exist, but in different forms.
 Medieval music uses many plucked string
instruments like
the lute, mandore, gittern and psaltery.
Thedulcimers, similar in structure to
the psaltery and zither, were originally
plucked, but became struck in the 14th
century after the arrival of the new
technology that made metal strings
possible.

7.  Mediaeval music was
both sacred and secular.[2] During
the earlier mediaeval
period, the liturgical genre, predominantly
Gregorian
chant, was monophonic. Polyphonic genre
s began to develop during the high
mediaeval era, becoming prevalent by the
later 13th and early 14th century. The
development of such forms is often
associated with the Ars nova.

8. Early chant traditions
 Chant (or plainsong) is
a monophonic sacred form which
represents the earliest known music
of the Christian church.
The JewishSynagogue tradition of
singing psalms was a strong influence
on Christian chanting.

9. Early polyphony: organum
 Around the end of the ninth century, singers
in monasteries such as St.
Gall in Switzerland began experimenting with
adding another part to the chant, generally
a voice in parallel motion, singing mostly in
perfect fourths or fifths above the original
tune (see interval). This development is
called organum and represents the
beginnings
of harmony and, ultimately, of counterpoint.
Over the next several centuries, organum
developed in several ways.

10. Liturgical drama
 Another musical tradition of Europe originating
during the early Middle Ages was the liturgical
drama. In its original form, it may represent a
survival of Roman drama with Christian stories -
mainly the Gospel, the Passion, and the lives of
the saints - grafted on. Every part of Europe had
some sort of tradition of musical or semi-musical
drama in the Middle Ages, involving
acting, speaking, singing and instrumental
accompaniment in some combination. These
dramas were probably performed by travelling
actors and musicians. Many have been preserved
sufficiently to allow modern reconstruction and
performance (for example the Play of
Daniel, which has been recently recorded).

11. Goliards
 The Goliards were itinerant poet-musicians of
Europe from the tenth to the middle of the
thirteenth century. Most were scholars
orecclesiastics, and they wrote and sang in Latin.
Although many of the poems have survived, very
little of the music has. They were possibly
influential — even decisively so — on
the troubadour-trouvère tradition which was to
follow. Most of their poetry is secular and, while
some of the songs celebrate religious
ideals, others are frankly profane, dealing with
drunkenness, debauchery and lechery.

12. High medieval music (1150-
1300)
 Ars antiqua
The flowering of the Notre Dame school of
polyphony from around 1150 to 1250
corresponded to the equally impressive
achievements inGothic architecture: indeed the
centre of activity was at the cathedral of Notre
Dame itself. Sometimes the music of this period
is called the Parisian school, or Parisian
organum, and represents the beginning of what
is conventionally known as Ars antiqua. This was
the period in which rhythmic notation first
appeared in western music, mainly a context-
based method of rhythmic notation known as
therhythmic modes.

13. Troubadours and trouvères
 The music of
the troubadours and trouvères was a
vernacular tradition of monophonic
secular song, probably accompanied by
instruments, sung by
professional, occasionally itinerant, musici
ans who were as skilled as poets as they
were singers and instrumentalists.

14. Late medieval music (1300-
1400)
 The beginning of the Ars nova is one of the few
clean chronological divisions in medieval
music, since it corresponds to the publication of
the Roman de Fauvel, a huge compilation of
poetry and music, in 1310 and 1314. The Roman
de Fauvel is a satire on abuses in the medieval
church, and is filled with medieval
motets, lais, rondeaux and other new secular
forms. While most of the music is anonymous, it
contains several pieces by Philippe de Vitry, one
of the first composers of
the isorhythmic motet, a development which
distinguishes the fourteenth century. The
isorhythmic motet was perfected by Guillaume
de Machaut, the finest composer of the time.

15. Transitioning to the
Renaissance
 Demarcating the end of the medieval era and the
beginning of the Renaissance, with regard to the
composition of music, is problematic. While the music of
the fourteenth century is fairly obviously medieval in
conception, the music of the early fifteenth century is
often conceived as belonging to a transitional period, not
only retaining some of the ideals of the end of the Middle
Ages (such as a type of polyphonic writing in which the
parts differ widely from each other in character, as each
has its specific textural function), but also showing some
of the characteristic traits of the Renaissance (such as the
international style developing through the diffusion of
Franco-Flemish musicians throughout Europe, and in
terms of texture an increasing equality of parts).

16. SACRED MUSIC IN ANTIQUITY
 "The sound of early Near Eastern music
would seem less strange to the modern ear
than previously thought. Though we are not
informed about ancient rhythms and
tempos, we do know
that heptatonic, diatonic scales [scales of
seven degrees based on steps and half-
steps, as on the white keys of a
piano], familiar to us from modern
music, also existed in antiquity" (op. cit.;
emphasis mine).

17.  While the above remark about ancient
rhythm is not quite true (thanks not only
to the Hebrew Bible and its melodic
rendition, but to various ancient oral
traditions), we have direct written
evidence about ancient scales, artistic
renditions of stringed instruments and
chironomists, and even surviving
instruments in various tunings.