Medieval Era

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‘Medieval’ as a concept is very hard to define, and the period itself is just as difficult to delineate. It was a term invented by Renaissance writers who wished to make a distinction between their modernity and what had gone before. Although the onset of the Renaissance is often taken to be around the beginning of the fourteenth century, it was some time before the ideas associated with it took ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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In the second half of the twelfth century, the new cathedral of Notre Dame was the focus of an extraordinary effort by Leonin and others to create a whole new musical liturgy. Thanks to their efforts and to the presence of the increasingly independent University of Paris, whose curriculum was aimed towards ecclesiastical careers, the city became a leading musical centre. From Paris emanated the most important developments in musical ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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The two great architectural styles of the medieval age were the Romanesque and the Gothic. The Romanesque, with its round-arch forms borrowed from classical buildings, is a massive style, characterized by solid pillars supporting the great stone roof vaults that were a new feature of construction. It is often crowded with imaginative sculpture. During the twelfth century, architects began to incorporate novel elements into their church designs, which soon developed into ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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Winchester Troper: one of the earliest sources of polyphony, an English manuscript dating from the early eleventh century and originally used in Winchester; now in Cambridge. Montpellier Codex: an important source of motets, compiled during the thirteenth century; now in the Bibliothèque interuniversitaire, Montpellier. Roman de Fauvel: a satirical poem about the church written in the early fourteenth century. The most important manuscript has 167 musical items inserted in and appended to ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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Guido of Arezzo (b. c. ad 990/5) was perhaps the most influential music theorist of all time. He not only wrote one of the most widely read treatises of the Middle Ages, the Micrologus, but he also invented the system of lines for notating music that is still used today and a method of teaching melodies using the syllables ut, re, mi, fa, sol and la. Guido built a reputation ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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Composers of the twentieth century and up to the present have often been drawn to the music of the medieval and Renaissance periods. A relatively early example is Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971), who became interested in the fourteenth-century technique of hocket and in the harmonic experiments of the Italian composer Carlo Gesualdo (c. 1561–1613). Hocket has since inspired many composers, both modernist (Harrison Birtwistle, b. 1934, for instance, in his Carmen ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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Du Fay’s Mass L’homme armé was one of the first of several dozen Masses of that name composed between the years 1450 and 1700. ‘L’homme armé’ (‘The Armed Man’) was a popular, probably satirical, tune which may have been aimed at the less-valiant members of the French army during the last stages of the Hundred Years’ War. Attracted by its tunefulness and its simple form, composers began writing Masses using ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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The term contenance angloise (‘English manner’), was first coined by the poet Martin Le Franc in his poem ‘Le Champion des Dames’ (c. 1440–42), in which he described new French music and implied that Du Fay and Binchois had ‘taken on the contenance angloise and followed Dunstaple’. Although the poet did not define the term, the text immediately before this passage speaks of the ‘elegant concord’ in the new music. ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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Written in the early 1360s, Machaut’s Mass cycle sets all the movements of the Ordinary, the dismissal (Ite missa est), and its response. Although not all the movements are based on chant (the Kyrie, Sanctus, Agnus Dei and the dismissal are based on their respective plainchant melodies, in isorhythm, whereas the Gloria and Credo are set to freely composed syllabic polyphony), the Mass uses four-part scoring and similar vocal ranges ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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The medieval bagpipe consisted of an animal-skin bag and a series of wooden pipes. The player held the bag under the arm and inflated it by blowing down one of the pipes. A second pipe, the ‘chanter’, contained a series of holes on which to play a melody, while the remainder, the ‘drones’, maintained a continuous, unvarying background chord. By keeping a steady pressure on the bag, the player was ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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The bell may have been the instrument most widely and frequently heard in the European Middle Ages. Handbells had survived into the medieval period from antiquity; in addition, large bells were hung in church towers. Their loud sound was believed to keep away demons, so they may have offset the fear of churchyards. Bells were made of bronze; the small ones were sounded by being shaken, the large ones swung ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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The early medieval bow looked not unlike the weapon: a convex, dramatically curved wooden structure with horsehair where the archer’s bowstring would have been. There was no attempt at standardization, and construction seems to have varied as different styles were tried out. Even by the late Middle Ages, the bow had only settled down in design terms to some degree. Length ranged between 50 and 80 cm (20 and 31 ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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Because the name ‘hurdy-gurdy’ was abducted by the nineteenth-century barrel organ, this instrument is rarely taken as seriously as it deserves. Known as the ‘organistrum’ from the tenth to twelfth centuries, it was a stringed instrument played by a cranked resined wheel, not a bow. It required two operators, one of whom would crank and one play, and it was associated at first with the clergy in choir schools. In ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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The medieval plucked lyre had six strings which passed over a bridge resting on the front of a hollow resonant body. These strings were secured at the base of the instrument and were fixed to a yoke which was shaped like a crossbar between two arms projecting upwards from the sides of the body. In order to play the instrument, the lyre was rested in the lap and the right ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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The medieval pipe was played by blowing directly into a mouthpiece, like a recorder or penny whistle. Although it usually had only three holes to finger, by varying the force of blowing, players could achieve a working range of about one-and-a-half octaves. It was played with the right hand; the left hand held a thick, stubby beater to play a type of drum called a tabor. Traditionally associated with clowns ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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