Unit1.Medieval Music
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Transcript of Unit1.Medieval Music
IES Las Encinas 2º de ESO Proyecto Bilingüe
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Unit 1:
Medieval music
Index:
1. Religious Music: Gregorian Chant
2. Secular music: troubadours and trouveres.
IES Las Encinas 2º de ESO Proyecto Bilingüe
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Basic vocabulary
Courtly Love: amor cortés.
Crowds: multitude.
Crusades: cruzadas.
Dreary: deprimente.
Fairs: ferias.
Huge: grande.
Hunger: hambruna.
Jongleurs: juglares.
Knights: caballeros.
Mass: misa.
Middle Ages: Edad Media.
Muddy: embarrado.
Neumes: neumas.
Square notation: notación cuadrada.
Storytelling: narración.
Wedding: boda.
IES Las Encinas 2º de ESO Proyecto Bilingüe
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Medieval music was an integral part of everyday life for the people of that time period.
Music of the Middle Ages was especially popular during times of celebration and festivities in
convents and cathedrals as well as castles and palaces.
1. Religious Music: Gregorian Chant
Gregorian chant is a form of
monophonic religious music in
Western Christianity that
accompanied the celebration of Mass
and other ritual services. This vast
repertoire of chants is the oldest music
known.
In the beginning the chants
were learnt by the viva voce method.
Later, in the 10th century, the first
written repertoire appeared. The
earliest notation used symbols called neumes to indicate tone-movements and relative duration
within each syllable but not the specific pitches of individual notes. By the 13th century, the
neumes of Gregorian chant were usually written in square notation on a four-line staff with a
clef.
Neumas and square notation
IES Las Encinas 2º de ESO Proyecto Bilingüe
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Gregorian chant is, of course, vocal music. The relationship between text and music can
be "syllabic" if there´s one syllable per sound; "neumatic" if there’s a group of notes per syllable
and “melismatic” if there are five or six notes per syllable to over sixty in the largest melismas.
Syllabic chant:
Neumatic chant:
Melismatic chant:
IES Las Encinas 2º de ESO Proyecto Bilingüe
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Chant is written in Latin and was normally sung in unison without instruments (a capella)
so its texture is monophonic. There isn’t a beat or regular metric accent which doesn’t mean
absence of rhythm: the text determines the accent while the melody determines the phrasing.
Remember…
• Religious text written in Latin.
• Monophonic texture.
• There isn´t a beat or regular metric accent.
• Vocal music without instruments.
• Anonymous composers.
2. Secular music: troubadours and trouveres.
Troubadour is the generic term
for poets and minstrels who flourished in
southern France and in Northern Italy
from the 11th through the 13th
centuries. Called trouveres in northern
France and meistersingers in Germany,
these artists converted storytelling into
an art, and often entertained huge
crowds at fairs, weddings and other
medieval celebrations. Normally they
used new musical instruments, brought
back to Western Europe from the
Crusades.
Medieval times often evoke images of knights battling on muddy fields, dark and dreary
castles, hunger and wars… but these Dark Ages also saw the birth of a romantic movement.
French lords were poets and musicians and they wrote epic love poems about Courtly Love.
Jongleurs were professional singers who performed these compositions from town to town.
IES Las Encinas 2º de ESO Proyecto Bilingüe
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Exercises
1) Label each picture with the correct term from the box:
neumatic chant neumes mellismatic chant syllabic chant
(1)_______________________________________ (2)_______________________________________
(3)________________________________________ (4)_______________________________________
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2) Fill in the blank:
-When music is sung without instruments, it is called ____________________________.
-A ______________________ was a poet who sang stories.
-If a chant is _________________, it only has one note per syllable, and if it is__________________, there
can be many notes for one syllable.
-Neumes were written in _________________________ by the 13th century.
3) Find the mistakes in each sentence and correct them:
-Trouveres were professional singers who performed compositions about death written by
German lords from town to town.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
-Normally, troubadours used old musical instruments brought back to Western Europe from
New York.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
-Chants were written in English, were normally not sung in unison, and used instruments, so their
texture is polyphonic.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________