Middle Ages
The Middle Ages refers to a period in European history that spanned around 1000 years, from the 5th to the 15th century. Though renowned for its grand castles, and brave knights, the medieval period also yielded an abundance of advancements to the various arts, including music. This period of history gave rise to some of the most influential musicians in human history, as well as numerous instruments and ideas we still use to this day.
During the early Middle Ages, most of the music was associated with religion and prayer, such that they were mainly written in Latin. The Gregorian chant, a form of monophonic music mainly associated with the Roman Catholic Church, was a dominant form of music. During this time, most of the music was monophonic, meaning that the songs and chants only consisted of only one line of melody, without any sort of harmony, or additional parts. Later, more complex types of music such as polyphonic music evolved from the monophonic Georgian chants. These songs had more than additional vocal parts singing on top of the main melody. In the modern day, it seems relatively intuitive that harmonies and stacking vocals can produce beautiful sounds, but back in medieval times, adaptations of music on as grand of a level as this were a big deal, giving rise to a whole new era of music.
Around the same time of the spread of polyphonic music, secular music also spread across Europe like wildfire. As mentioned, music was predominantly used in religious practices, but secular music – music not related to any religion – was slowly becoming the norm. In fact, wandering musicians, also known as troubadours, would travel around the countryside of Europe, singing secular songs in languages other than Latin. With all these major changes came some of the greatest musical minds of all time, who would influence music millenniums to come.
Such musicians include Hildegard von Bingen, Guillaume de Machaut and Léonin.
Hildegard von Bingen:
Hildegard von Bingen, also known as Saint Hildegard, was a German writer, composer, philosopher, mystic and visionary during the High Middle Ages. She is one of the best known composers of scared monopsony, as well as the most recorded in modern history. Throughout the years of her monastic life, Hildegard produced volumes of music alongside her other work. She composed 77 works of music, including one of her better known works, Ordo Virtutum, a musical play on morality. Hildegard’s most renowned musical works include Ordo Virtutum, 43 antiphons, 18 responsories, as well as sequences, hymns, and chants.
Guillaume de Machaut:
Guillaume de Machaut was a French composer and poet who was the central figure of the Ars Nova style in late medieval music, also regarded as one of the leading French composers of the Ars Nova musical style of the 14th century. Machaut’s contribution to the Ars Nova movement generated change in music composition that would continue to expand throughout centuries. Machaut’s largest single musical work, the mass La Messe de Nostre Dame, is the earliest complete setting of the Ordinary in existence by one composer. His few surviving works include Messe de Nostre Dame, the rondeaux p, Ma fin est mon commencement, and Rose, Liz, printemps, verdure, as well as the virelai Douce Dame Jolie.
Léonin:
Leonin was the first known significant composer of polyphonic organum. As a French, Leonin worked in Paris at the Notre Dame Cathedral and was the earliest member of the Notre Dame school of polyphony. Leonin of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, is the earliest known composer of polyphonic art music, and the creator of controlled rhythm and meter, as well the crematorium of the earliest notation to convey rhythm. Leonin was mentioned by a later student at the cathdral as the composer of the Magnus Liber, the “great book” of organum— a repertory of medieval music.
At the end of the day, it’s admittedly difficult to imagine how far music has come from the Middle Ages and what it means for music in the modern day. When we think of advancements in music in history, our mind automatically gravitates towards time periods like the renaissance, or famous composers like Beethoven, and Mozart, but we need to realize that it was only through the advancements of music made in the middle ages that other musicians built upon to form music as we know it today.