18 Facts About Medieval music

Medieval music encompasses the sacred and secular music of Western Europe during the Middle Ages, from approximately the 6th to 15th centuries.

Medieval music includes liturgical music used for the church, and secular music, non-religious music; solely vocal music, such as Gregorian chant and choral music, solely instrumental music, and music that uses both voices and instruments .

Medieval music was composed and, for some vocal and instrumental music, improvised for many different music genres .

Medieval music created for sacred and secular was typically written by composers, except for some sacred vocal and secular instrumental music which was improvised .

The Ars Nova, which means "new art", was an innovative style of writing music that served as a key transition from the medieval music style to the more expressive styles of the post-1400s Renaissance music era.

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Finally, purely instrumental Medieval music developed during this period, both in the context of a growing theatrical tradition and for court performances for the aristocracy.

Dance Medieval music, often improvised around familiar tropes, was the largest purely instrumental genre.

Many instruments used to perform medieval music still exist in the 21st century, but in different and typically more technologically developed forms.

Medieval music used many plucked string instruments like the lute, a fretted instrument with a pear-shaped hollow body which is the predecessor to the modern guitar.

Duration of the medieval period, most music would be composed primarily in perfect tempus, with special effects created by sections of imperfect tempus; there is a great current controversy among musicologists as to whether such sections were performed with a breve of equal length or whether it changed, and if so, at what proportion.

Equal importance to the overall history of western Medieval music theory were the textural changes that came with the advent of polyphony.

Medieval music united this style with measured discant passages, which used the rhythmic modes to create the pinnacle of organum composition.

Medieval music theorists called these pairs maneriae and labeled them according to the Greek ordinal numbers.

The Mozarabic liturgy even survived through Muslim rule, though this was an isolated strand and this Medieval music was later suppressed in an attempt to enforce conformity on the entire liturgy.

Medieval music's wrote many monophonic works for the Catholic Church, almost all of them for female voices.

The sound world of Ars Nova Medieval music is very much one of linear primacy and rhythmic complexity.

Italian Medieval music has always been known for its lyrical or melodic character, and this goes back to the 14th century in many respects.

Medieval music was the most famous member of the Franco-Flemish School in the last half of the 15th century, and is often considered the most influential composer between Dufay and Josquin des Prez.