essay about medieval music

Medieval Period Music Guide: A Brief History

Imagine a time when the air was filled with the haunting melodies of Gregorian chants, the rhythmic pulses of courtly dances, and the harmonies that echoed within the cold stone walls of ancient cathedrals. Welcome to the medieval music period—a captivating era of music that spanned almost a millennium, weaving together the threads of art, culture, and spirituality.

This guide will look at some of the history, key composers, and important musical features to help give you an understanding of what makes a piece from this time sound the way it does. Let’s get started.

Table of Contents

When was the Medieval Period of Music?

Because it covers such a long time frame, stretching from 500-1400AD, historians like to split the Medieval era into three mini-periods, each of which saw various new musical developments.

• Early Medieval music (500-1150)
• High Medieval music (1150-1300)
• Late Medieval music (1300-1400)

These mini periods saw different styles of medieval music that we’ll cover in this article.

If you’d like a broader overview of the entire history of Western art music tradition, do take a look at our guide to classical music eras here.

Gregorian Chant

The dominant form of music in the Early Medieval period was Gregorian chant , which was named after Pope Gregory, who was credited with bringing it to the West.

Otherwise known as plainsong, it was liturgical, meaning that it was sung by monks as a ceremonial part of Mass in the Catholic Church.

This was monophonic music , meaning that it contained just a single melodic line, sung by the monks in unison, with no accompanying harmony parts or instrumental accompaniment.

Here is an example of a monophonic plainsong sung by the Gregorian Choir of Paris:

The 9th Century saw the development of organum.

This is where an extra voice is added above the main melody, usually at a fixed interval of a perfect fourth or fifth away.

This can be seen as an extremely primitive form of counterpoint (the relationship between simultaneous interdependent musical lines) and the beginning of harmony as we now know it.

Here’s a video of some early organum where you can hear the second voice singing the second line.

Liturgical Dramas

The first liturgical dramas were probably seen in the 10th Century.

A liturgical drama was a sort of religious musical play where monks, nuns, and priests sang and acted out biblical stories or scenes, including dramas that told the stories of Christmas or Easter.

Secular Music and Development of Polyphony

Although most music in the medieval period was religious, the High Medieval period saw the birth of the troubadour in France.

These wandering minstrels would make a living by traveling from town to town and were some of the earliest professional musicians.

They performed monophonic secular songs on topics including war, chivalry, and ‘courtly love’ – the love of an idealized woman from afar. The Minnesinger was the Germanic equivalent of this tradition.

Ars Nova was an artistic movement that gained traction in the Late Medieval period, at the beginning of the 14th Century.

Meaning “new art” in Latin, this was secular music that was increasingly expressive and varied.

Polyphonic writing (which has two or more simultaneous independent melodic parts) had begun to develop in the High Medieval period, and this now became the dominant style.

This shift led the way for the Renaissance era that was to follow, which would be characterized by a grander and more complex style.

Here is a piece of polyphonic music by Guillaume de Machaut, a major composer of the late Medieval era:

Music Notation in the Medieval Era

It was during the Medieval period that the foundations were laid for the way that we write down music today.

Until around the 9th Century, there was no written music, so pieces had to be taught “by ear” from person to person.

An early solution to this in the world of plainsong was the introduction of neumes , a series of symbols placed above the words, which indicated whether the pitch went up or down.

To begin with, the notation was not sophisticated enough to accurately record every aspect of a tune, so it was used as more of a memory aid, rather than as a comprehensive informative document.

As a result, interpretation of pieces would vary significantly from region to region.

Gradually, the notes began to be placed at different heights to give a rough indication of the size of the interval between each note then, gradually, horizontal lines were added for more accurate placement: this would ultimately lead to the five-line stave that we use for music notation today.

Now that pieces could be notated on parchment or paper, composers were able to share their music much more easily and widely, which allowed the Church to standardize the musical material for its religious ceremonies.

Rhythmic Notation

Incredibly, there was no way of notating rhythm until the 13th Century, when a system of rhythmic modes was developed.

These were set patterns of long and short note durations.

German theorist Franco of Cologne then came up with a system that laid the foundations for the way we write rhythms today, whereby differently shaped notes signified different note lengths.

This approach was popularised by Phillipe de Vitry, one of the most important composers of the Ars Nova period.

The functional tonal harmony and cadences that would dominate the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods had not yet been developed.

Medieval music was based upon a series of scales called modes whereby a melody would be built upon a particular scale.

There were eight ‘church modes’, which were all considered to have different effects upon the listener:

• Hypodorian (which we would now call Aeolian)
• Hypophrygian (which we now call Locrian)
• Hypolydian (which we would call Ionian)
• Hypomixolydian (which is like a Dorian scale, but with the fourth degree as its ‘Finalis’, or ending note)

These modes can be accessed by playing a scale starting on various degrees of the major scale .

For example, a D Dorian scale contains the same notes as a C major scale but has quite a different character.

The modal approach would return centuries later in some 20th Century classical music and jazz.

Medieval Instruments

As we’ve discovered, the Early Medieval period was dominated by vocal music but there were still a number of instruments used in the medieval era .

Instrumental music began to develop alongside the vocal music, and many of the instruments used then are ancestors of instruments used by musicians today.

For example, flutes were made of wood rather than metal, and had holes instead of the complex system of keys we see now.

The lute, a fretted instrument with a hollow body, is a predecessor of the guitar, while the gemshorn, made from the horn of a goat, is a member of the ocarina family.

Meanwhile, the wooden recorder is a rare example of an instrument that has essentially retained its form since the Medieval period.

Other instruments included an early bowed string instrument called the lyre, and the hurdy-gurdy, a kind of mechanical violin.

Key Medieval Composers

Here are some of the key composers from the Medieval period:

• Stephen of Liège (850 – 920) – Belgian bishop, hagiographer, and composer of church music who was active towards the end of the Early Medieval period
• Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) – one of the best-known composers of sacred monophony. Also a writer, abbess, philosopher, and polymath
• Franco of Cologne (dates unknown) – German theorist and composer of the Late Medieval period who was instrumental in developing the notation of rhythm
• Guillaume de Machaut (1300-1377) – French poet and composer. A central figure of the Ars Nova style

So, that concludes our guide to the Medieval period of music.

We’ve learned about early developments in music theory, notation, and harmony that would go on to help shape Western art music as we know it today and about early changes in religious and secular music.

We hope you’ve enjoyed learning about this vast, mysterious, and fascinating era and that you’ve loved some of the pieces of music that we’ve shared.

Dan Farrant

Dan Farrant, the founder of Hello Music Theory, has been teaching music for over 15 years, helping hundreds of thousands of students unlock the joy of music. He graduated from The Royal Academy of Music in 2012 and then launched Hello Music Theory in 2014. He plays the guitar, piano, bass guitar and double bass and loves teaching music theory.

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5 Music of the Middle Ages

Learning objectives.

• Identify historical and cultural contexts of the Middle Ages.
• Identify musical styles of the Middle Ages.
• Identify important genres and uses of music of the Middle Ages.
• Identify selected compositions of the Middle Ages and critically evaluate their style.
• Compare and contrast music of the Middle Ages with today’s contemporary music.

“Music of the Middle Ages” by Elizabeth Kramer From Understanding Music: Past and Present By Alan Clark, Thomas Heflin, Jeffery Kluball, and Elizabeth Kramer, Edited and revised by Jonathan Kulp and Bonnie Le

Introduction and Historical Context

Timeline: music of the middle ages , timeline: leading up to and through the middle ages.

• Founding of the monastic movement in Christianity
• Further refinement of musical notation, including notation for rhythm
• 300-900 CE, 4th–9th centuries: Development/codification of Christian chant
• ca. 400 CE: St. Augustine writes about church music
• Marks the end of Classical Antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages
• ca. 800 CE: First experiments in Western music
• Rise of feudalism & the Three Estates
• Growth of Marian culture
• Guido de Arezzo refines music notation and development of solfège
• 1088 CE: Founding of the University of Bologna
• ca. 1095–1291 CE: The Crusades
• 1140s CE: Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) writes Gregorian chants
• ca. 1163–1240s CE: Building of Notre Dame in Paris and the rise of Gothic architecture
• 1200-1300 CE, 13th century: Development of polyphony
• ca. 1275 CE: King Alfonso the Wise collects early songs in an exquisitely illuminated manuscript
• 1346–1353: Height of the bubonic plague (Black Death)
• 1300–1377 CE: Guillaume de Machaut composes songs and church music

Introduction

What do you think of when you hear the term the Middle Ages (450–1450)? For some, the semi-historical figures of Robin Hood and Maid Marian come to mind. Others recall Western Christianity’s Crusades to the Holy Land. Still others may have read about the arrival in European lands of the bubonic plague or Black Death, as it was called. For most twenty-first-century individuals, the Middle Ages seem far removed. Although life and music were quite different back then, we hope that you will find that there are cultural threads that extend from that distant time to now.

We normally start studies of Western music with the Middle Ages, but of course, music existed long before then. In fact, the term Middle Ages or medieval period got its name to describe the time in between (or “in the middle of”) the ancient age of classical Greece and Rome and the Renaissance of Western Europe, which roughly began in the fifteenth century. Knowledge of music before the Middle Ages is limited but what we do know largely revolves around the Greek mathematician Pythagoras, who died around 500 BCE.

Pythagoras might be thought of as a father of the modern study of acoustics due to his experimentation with bars of iron and strings of different lengths. Images of people singing and playing instruments, such as those found on the Greek vases, provide evidence that music was used for ancient theater, dance, and worship. The Greek word musicka not only referred to music but also referred to poetry and the telling of history. Writings of Plato and Aristotle referred to music as a form of ethos (an appeal to ethics). As the Roman Empire expanded across Western Europe, so too did Christianity. Considering that biblical texts from ancient Hebrews to those of early Christians provided numerous records of music used as a form of worship, the empire used music to help unify its people: the theory was that if people worshiped together in a similar way, then they might also stick together during political struggles.

Later, starting around 800, Western music is recorded in a notation that we can still decipher today. This brief overview of these five hundred years of the Roman Empire will help us better understand the music of the Middle Ages.

Historical Context for Music of the Middle Ages (800–1400)

During the Middle Ages, as during other periods of Western history, sacred and secular worlds were both separate and integrated. However, during this time, the Catholic Church was the most widespread and influential institution and leader in all things sacred. The Catholic Church’s head, the Pope, maintained political and spiritual power and influence among the noble classes and their geographic territories; the life of a high church official was not completely different from that of a noble counterpart, and many younger sons and daughters of the aristocracy found vocations in the church. Towns large and small had churches, spaces open to all: commoners, clergy, and nobles. The Catholic Church also developed a system of monasteries, where monks studied and prayed, often in solitude, even while making cultural and scientific discoveries that would eventually shape human life more broadly. In civic and secular life, kings, dukes, and lords wielded power over their lands and the commoners living therein. Kings and dukes had courts, gatherings of fellow nobles, where they forged political alliances, threw lavish parties, and celebrated both love and war in song and dance.

Many of the important historical developments of the Middle Ages arose either in the church or in the court. One such important development stemming from the Catholic Church would be the development of architecture. During this period, architects built increasingly tall and imposing cathedrals for worship through the technological innovations of pointed arches, flying buttresses , and large cut- glass windows. This new architectural style was referred to as “ gothic ,” which vastly contrasts with the Romanesque style, with its rounded arches and smaller windows. Another important development stemming from the courts occurred in the arts. Poets and musicians, attached to the courts, wrote poetry, literature, and music less and less in Latin—still the common language of the church—and increasingly in their own vernacular languages (the predecessors of today’s French, Italian, Spanish, German, and English). However, one major development of the Middle Ages spanned sacred and secular worlds: universities shot up in locales from Bologna, Italy, and Paris, France, to Oxford, England (the University of Bologna being the first). At university, a young man could pursue a degree in theology, law, or medicine. Music of a sort was studied as one of the seven liberal arts and sciences, specifically as the science of proportions.

Music in the Middle Ages: An Overview

Not surprisingly, given their importance during the Middle Ages, both the Catholic Church and the network of aristocratic courts left a significant mark on music of the time. Much of the music from that era that was written down in notation and still exists comes from Christian worship or court entertainment. Churches and courts employed scribes and artists to write down their music in beautifully illuminated manuscripts such as this one that features Guillaume Machaut’s “Dame, a vous sans retoller,” discussed later. Churchmen such as the monk Guido de Arezzo devised musical systems such as “solfège” still used today.

As we study a few compositions from the Middle Ages, we will see the following musical developments at play: (1) the development of musical texture from monophony to polyphony and (2) the shift from music whose rhythm is hinted at by its words to music that has measured rhythms indicated by new developments in musical notation. Although we know that instrumental music existed in the Middle Ages, most of the music that has survived is vocal.

Music for Medieval Christian Worship

The earliest music of Catholic Christianity was the chant—that is, monophonic a cappella music, most often sung in worship in Latin. As you learned in the first chapter of this book, monophony refers to music with one melodic line that may be performed by one or many individuals at the same time. Largely due to the belief of some Catholics that instruments were too closely associated with secular music, instruments were rarely used in medieval worship; therefore, most chant was sung a cappella , or without instruments. As musical notation for rhythm had not yet developed, the exact development of rhythm in chant is uncertain. However, based on church traditions (some of which still exist), we believe that the rhythms of medieval chants were guided by the natural rhythms provided by the words.

Medieval Catholic worship included services throughout the day. The most important of these services was the Mass, at which the Eucharist, also known as communion, was celebrated (this celebration includes the consumption of bread and wine representing the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ). Five chants of the mass (the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei) were typically included in every mass, no matter what date in the church calendar. These five chants make up the Mass Ordinary , and Catholics, as well as some Protestants, still use this liturgy in worship today.

In the evening, one might attend a Vespers service, at which chants called hymns were sung. Hymns, like most of the rest of the Catholic liturgy, were sung in Latin. Hymns most often featured four-line strophes in which the lines were generally the same length and often rhymed. Each strophe or verse of a given hymn was sung to the same music, and for that reason, we say that hymns are in strophic form . Hymns like most chants generally had a range of about an octave, which made them easy to sing.

Throughout the Middle Ages, Mary the mother of Jesus, referred to as the Virgin Mary, was a central figure in Catholic devotion and worship. Under Catholic belief, she is upheld as the perfect woman, having been chosen by God to miraculously give birth to the Christ while still a virgin. She was given the role of intercessor, a mediator for the Christian believer with a petition for God, and as such appeared in many medieval chants.

Focus Composition: Ave Generosa by Hildegard of Bingen (12th Century)

Many composers of the Middle Ages will forever remain anonymous. Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) from the German Rhineland is a notable exception. At the age of fourteen, Hildegard’s family gave her to the Catholic Church, where she studied Latin and theology at the local monastery. Known for her religious visions, Hildegard eventually became an influential religious leader, artist, poet, scientist, and musician. She would go on to found three convents and become an abbess, the chief administrator of an abbey.

Writing poetry and music for her fellow nuns to use in worship was one of many of Hildegard’s activities, and the hymn “Ave Generosa” is just one of her many compositions. This hymn has multiple strophes in Latin that praise Mary and her role as the bearer of the Son of God. The manuscript contains one melodic line that is sung for each of the strophes, making it a strophic monophonic chant. Although some leaps occur, the melody is conjunct. The range of the melody line, although still approachable for the amateur singer, is a bit wider than other church chants of the Middle Ages. The melody contains two types of text singing: syllabic, which is one syllable per note, and melismas. A melisma is the singing of multiple pitches on one syllable of text. Overall, the rhythm of the chant follows the rhythm of the syllables of the text.

Examples of each:

Audio Ex. 5.1: Syllabic chant

Audio Ex. 5.2: Melismatic chant

https://louis.pressbooks.pub/app/uploads/sites/4/2022/02/MelismaticChant1.mp3

Chant is by definition monophonic, but scholars suspect that medieval performers sometimes added musical lines to the texture, probably starting with drones (a pitch or group of pitches that were sustained while most of the ensemble sang together the melodic line). Performances of chant music today often add embellishments, such as occasionally having a fiddle or small organ play the drone instead of being vocally incorporated. Performers of the Middle Ages possibly did likewise, even if prevailing practices called for entirely a cappella worship.

Listening Guide

Listen on YouTube to the UCLA Early Music Ensemble performing Ave Generosa ; soloist Arreanna Rostosky; audio and video by Umberto Belfiore. Composer: Hildegard of Bingen, composition: Ave Generosa , 12th century.

• Genre: Hymn (a type of chant)
• Form: Strophic; listen through 3:17 for the first four strophes.
• Nature of text: Multiple, four-line strophes in Latin, praising the Virgin Mary (text and translation found at Norma Gentile)
• Performing forces: Small ensemble of vocalists
• It is a chant.
• It is a cappella .
• Its rhythms follow the rhythms of the text.
• It is monophonic (although this performance adds a drone).
• Its melodic line is mostly conjunct.
• Its melody contains many melismas.
• It has a Latin text sung in a strophic form.

Audio Ex. 5.3: Ave Generosa by Hildegard of Bingen

https://louis.pressbooks.pub/app/uploads/sites/4/2022/02/Ave-Generosa-by-Hildegard-of-Bingen.mp3

The Emergence of Polyphonic Music for the Medieval Church

Initial embellishments such as the addition of a musical drone to a monophonic chant were probably improvised during the Middle Ages. With the advent of musical notation that could indicate polyphony, composers began writing polyphonic compositions for worship, initially intended for select parts of the liturgy to be sung by the most trained and accomplished of the priests or monks leading the Mass. Originally, these polyphonic compositions featured two musical lines at the same time; eventually, third and fourth lines were added. Polyphonic liturgical music, originally called organum, emerged in Paris around the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In this case, growing musical complexity seems to parallel growing architectural complexity.

Composers wrote polyphony so that the cadences , or ends of musical phrases and sections, resolved to simultaneously sounding perfect intervals. Perfect intervals are the intervals of fourths, fifths, and octaves. Such intervals are called perfect because they are the first intervals derived from the overtone series. As hollow and even disturbing as perfect intervals can sound to our modern ears, the Middle Ages used them in church partly because they believed that what was perfect was more appropriate for the worship of God than the imperfect.

In Paris, composers also developed an early type of rhythmic notation, which was important considering that individual singers would now be singing different musical lines that needed to stay in sync. By the end of the fourteenth century, this rhythmic notation began looking a little bit like the rhythmic notation recognizable today. Beginning a music composition, a symbol fell indicating something like our modern meter symbols. This symbol told the performer whether the composition was in two or in three and laid out the note value that provided the basic beat. Initially almost all metered church music used triple time, because the number three was associated with perfection and theological concepts such as the trinity.

Elsewhere in what is now France, Guillaume de Machaut (ca. 1300–1377) emerged as the most important poet and composer of his century and is credited with composing the earliest polyphonic setting of the Mass. He is the first composer about which we have much biographical information, due in part to the fact that Machaut himself, near the end of his life, collected his poetry into volumes of manuscripts, which include a miniature image of the composer. We know that he traveled widely as a cleric and secretary for John, the King of Bohemia. Around 1340, he moved to Reims (now in France), where he served as a church official at the cathedral. There he had more time to write poetry and music, which he seems to have continued doing for some time.

Focus Composition: Agnus Dei from the Nostre Dame Mass (ca. 1364 CE)

We think that Machaut wrote his Messe de Nostre Dame (Mass of Our Lady) around 1364. This composition is famous because it was one of the first compositions to set all five movements of the Mass ordinary as a complete whole: these movements are the pieces of the Catholic liturgy comprising every Mass, no matter what time of the year. Movement in music refers to a musical section that sounds complete but that is part of a larger musical composition. Musical connections between each movement of this Mass cycle—the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei—suggest that Machaut intended them to be performed together rather than being traded in and out of a Mass based on the preferences of the priest leading the service. Agnus Dei was composed after Machaut’s brother’s death in 1372; this Mass was likely performed every week in a side chapel of the Reims Cathedral. Medieval Catholics commonly paid for Masses to be performed in honor of their deceased loved ones.

As you listen to the “Agnus Dei” movement from the Messe de Nostre Dame , try imagining that you are sitting in that side chapel of the cathedral at Reims, a cathedral that looks not unlike the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. Its slow tempo might remind us that this was music that memorialized Machaut’s dead brother, and its triple meter allegorized perfection. Remember that although its perfect intervals may sound disturbing to our ears, for those in the Middle Ages, they symbolized that which was most appropriate and musically innovative.

Listen on YouTube to Oxford Camerata performing “Agnus Dei” from La Messe de Nostre Dame , directed by Jeremy Summerly; composer, Guillaume de Machaut, date: ca. 1364 CE.

• Genre: Movement from the Ordinary of the Mass
• Form: A–B–A
• Nature of text: Latin words from the Mass Ordinary: Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, Miserere nobis (Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us)
• It is part of the Latin mass.
• It uses four-part polyphony.
• It has a slow tempo.
• Its melody lines have a lot of melismas.
• It is in triple meter, symbolizing perfection.
• It uses simultaneous intervals of fourths, fifths, and octaves, also symbolizing perfection.
• Its overall form is A–B–A.

Audio Ex. 5.4: Agnus Dei from Messe De Notre Dame by Guillaume de Machaut

https://louis.pressbooks.pub/app/uploads/sites/4/2022/02/Agnus-Dei-From-Messe-De-Notre-Dame-by-Guillaume-de-Machaut.mp3

Medieval Secular Music

The popular music of the time was sung not in Latin but in the vernacular (everyday language) of that country. The most common secular vocal music performed then was sung by poet-musicians called minnesingers, trouveres, and troubadours. They were mainly singers from the upper classes who performed for private functions. The traveling street musicians who sang this type of music were called minstrels.

The music was usually about courtly love and included a refrain (distinctive melody with recurring words), with many of the songs being strophic (each verse of text sung to the same melody). A famous woman troubadour of the 12th century was Beatriz of Dia. She was a well-educated countess who had an arranged marriage. She took a lover, wrote poetry about her love, and then it was put to music as a troubadour song. Although she wrote many songs, this is the one song to have survived. It’s called “A Chantar” (“It Is Mine to Sing”).

Something to Think About 

Listen to Beatriz of Dia’s “A Chantar” and read the English translation in this YouTube video. Was this a happy song? What do you think she was feeling when she sang this song about her lover?

Video 5.3: Performed by Clemencic Consort; Singer, Pilar Figueras

Music in Medieval Courts

From Understanding Music: Past and Present, By N. Alan Clark, Thomas Heflin, and Elizabeth Kramer

Like the Catholic Church, medieval kings, dukes, lords, and other members of the nobility had resources to sponsor musicians to provide them with music for worship and entertainment. Individuals roughly comparable to today’s singer-songwriters served courts throughout Europe. Like most singer-songwriters, love was a favored topic. These poet-composers also sang of devotion to the Virgin Mary and of the current events of the day.

Many songs that merge these two focus points appear in a late thirteenth-century manuscript called the Cantigas de Santa Maria (Songs for the Virgin Mary), a collection sponsored by King Alfonso the Wise , who ruled the northwestern corner of the Iberian Peninsula. Cantigas de Santa Maria also includes many illustrations of individuals playing instruments. The musician on the left in Figure 5.4 is playing a rebec, and the one to the right a lute. Elsewhere in the manuscript, these drummers and fifers appear (see Figure 5.5). These depictions suggest to us that, outside of worship services, much vocal music was accompanied by instruments. We believe such songs as these were also sung by groups and used as dance music, especially as early forms of rhythmic notation indicate simple and catchy patterns that were danceable. Other manuscripts also show individuals dancing to the songs of composers such as Machaut.

Focus Composition: Song of Mary, No. 181:

“The Virgin will aid those who most love her” is one of over four hundred songs praising the Virgin Mary in the Cantigas de Santa Maria described above. The song praises Mary for her help during the Crusades in defeating a Moroccan king in the city of Marrakesh. It uses a verse and refrain structure similar to those discussed in chapter 1. Its two-lined chorus (here called a refrain) is sung at the beginning of each of the eight four-lined strophes that serve as verses. The two-line melody for the refrain is repeated for the first two lines of the verse; a new melody then is used for the last two lines of the verse. In the recent recording done by Jordi Savall and his ensemble, a relatively large group of men and women sing the refrains, and soloists and smaller groups of singers perform the verses. The ensemble also includes a hand drum that articulates the repeating rhythmic motives, a medieval fiddle, and a lute, as well as medieval flutes and shawms near the end of the excerpt below. These parts are not notated in the manuscript, but it is likely that similar instruments would have been used to accompany this monophonic song in the middle ages.

Watch Cantigas De Santa Maria, no. 181, “The Virgin will aid those who most love her” (Pero que seja a gente d’outra lei [e]descreuda) on YouTube, performed by Jordi Savall and Ensemble; anonymous composer; date: ca. 1275 Listen from 0:13 through 3:29.

Video 5.4: Cantigas de Santa Maria

• Genre: Song
• Form: Refrain [A] & verses [ab] = A-ab
• Nature of text: Refrain and strophes in an earlier form of Portuguese, praising the Virgin Mary
• Performing forces: Small ensemble of vocalists, men and women singing together and separately
• It is music for entertainment, even though it has a sacred subject.
• It is monophonic.
• Its narrow-ranged melody and repetitive rhythms make it easy for non-professionals to sing.
• In this recording, the monophonic melody is sung by men and women and is played by a medieval fiddle and lute; a drum plays the beat; near the end of the excerpt, you can also hear flutes and shawms.
• Its musical form is A-ab, meaning that the refrain is always sung to the same music.

Medieval poet composers also wrote a lot of music about more secular love, a topic that continues to be popular for songs to the present day. Medieval musicians and composers, as well as much of European nobility in the Middle Ages, were particularly invested in what we call courtly love. Courtly love is love for a beloved without any concern for whether or not the love will be returned. The speakers within these poems recounted the virtues of their beloved, acknowledging the impossibility of ever consummating their love and pledging to continue loving their beloved to the end of their days.

Chapter Summary

In this chapter, we have studied music that dates back almost 1,500 years from today. In some ways, it differs greatly from our music today, though some continuous threads exist. Individuals in the Middle Ages used music for worship and entertainment, just as occurs today. They wrote sacred music for worship and also used sacred ideas in entertainment music. Music for entertainment included songs about love, religion, and current events, as well as music that might be danced to. Though the style and form of their music are quite different from ours in many ways, some aspects of musical style have not changed. Conjunct music with a relatively narrow range is still a typical choice in folk and pop music, owing to the fact that it is easy for even the amateur to sing. Songs in strophic form and songs with a refrain and contrasting verses also still appear in today’s pop music. As we continue on to study music of the Renaissance, keep in mind these categories of music that remain to the present day.

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Music Appreciation Copyright © 2022 by LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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The tradition of sung prayers and psalms extends into the shadows of early civilization. Such sacred singing was often accompanied by instruments, and its rhythmic character was marked. In the synagogue, however, the sung prayers were often unaccompanied. Ritual dance was excluded from the synagogue as the rhythmic character of sacred music surrendered its more sensual aspects. Even in the prayers themselves, rhythmic verse gave way to prose. The exclusion of women, the elevation of unison singing, and the exclusion of instruments served to establish a clear differentiation between musical performance in the synagogue and that of the street.

The musical performance tradition of the Christian Church grew out of the liturgical tradition of Judaism. The melodic formulas for the singing of psalms and the sung recitation of other scriptural passages are clearly based on Hebraic models.

Music in the Roman Catholic liturgy was performed mainly for the mass . Originally, the music was performed by the priest and the congregation , until, in time, there emerged from the congregation a special group of singers, called the choir , who assumed the musical role of answering and contrasting the solo singing of the priest. Women participated actively in musical performances in the ancient Christian Church until 578, when older Hebraic practices excluding them were restored. From that time until the 20th century, Roman Catholic Church choirs were composed solely of men and boys.

The first codification of early church music was reputedly made by Pope Gregory I during his reign (590–604). Gregory’s collection was selected from chants already in use. His codification assigned these chants to particular services in the liturgical calendar. In general it reinforced the simple, spiritual, aesthetic quality of liturgical music. The music in this collection serves as a model of melodic design even in the 21st century and is regarded as one of the monuments of Western musical literature. This school of unison liturgical singing is called plainchant, plainsong, or Gregorian chant . Specific details concerning the manner in which chant was performed have been lost. There are speculations that the quality of sound the singers employed was somewhat thinner and more nasal than that used by contemporary singers. The authentic rhythmic style of chant cannot be ascertained . There is a theory, however, that the basic rhythmic units had the same durational value and were grouped in irregularly alternating groups of twos and threes. Pitch levels and tempos apparently varied somewhat according to the occasion. There are preserved manuscript notations reminding singers to be careful and modest in their work, indicating that temptations of inattention and excessive vocal display existed for even the earliest liturgical musicians.

While modern musical traditions in the West are based to a large extent on the principles of antiquity preserved in the notated music of the early church, a secular musical practice did exist; but because of the pervasive influence of the church, the dividing line between sacred and secular aspects was thin throughout a good part of the medieval period.

Several types of later secular song have survived. The musical notations are for the most part inadequate to give an accurate impression of the music, but it is known that it retained the essential monophonic character of liturgical music. One curious type of secular song, conductus , originated in the church itself. This song did not use traditional liturgical melodies or texts but was composed to be sung in the liturgical dramas or for processions. For this reason it dealt occasionally with subjects not religious in character. The goliard songs dating from the 11th century are among the oldest examples of secular music. They were the often bawdy Latin songs of itinerant theological students who roamed rather disreputably from school to school in the period preceding the founding of the great university centres in the 13th century.

Several other groups of medieval performers developed literary and musical genres based on vernacular texts: the jongleurs , a group of travelling entertainers in western Europe who sang, did tricks, and danced to earn their living; the troubadours in the south of France and the trouvères in the north; and the minnesingers , a class of artist-knights who wrote and sang love songs tinged with religious fervour.

Instruments, such as the vielle , harp, psaltery, flute, shawm, bagpipe, and drums were all used during the Middle Ages to accompany dances and singing. Trumpets and horns were used by nobility, and organs, both portative (movable) and positive (stationary), appeared in the larger churches. In general, little is known of secular instrumental music before the 13th century. It is doubtful that it had a role of any importance apart from accompaniment . Yet the possibility of accompanied liturgical music has not been eliminated by modern scholars.

The medieval musical development with the furthest-reaching consequences for musical performance was that of polyphony, a development directly related, as indicated above, to the experience of performing liturgical chant. For performers and performance, perhaps the most important developments in the wake of polyphony were refinements of rhythmic notation necessary to keep independent melodic lines synchronous. At first the obvious visual method of vertical alignment was used; later, as upper voices became more elaborate in comparison with the (chant-derived) lower ones, and writing in score thus wasted space, more symbolic methods of notating rhythm developed, most importantly in and around the new cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris.

In the 14th century, partly because of the declining political strength of the church, the setting for new developments in music shifted from the sacred field to the secular, from the church to the court. This shift led in turn to a new emphasis on instrumental music and performance. Already the lower voices began to be performed on instruments—both because their long notes made them difficult to sing and because their texts (of only a few syllables) became senseless outside their original liturgical positions. Now, as secular princes became increasingly important patrons of composers and performers—a situation that would continue well into the 18th century—secular and instrumental music flourished . The polyphonic music of the church merged with the poetic art of the troubadours, and the two most important composers of the age were the blind Florentine organist Francesco Landini and the French poet Guillaume de Machaut , canon of Reims.

Most of the music of these composers seems to have been intended for combined vocal-instrumental performance, although this is seldom expressly indicated in the manuscripts. Medieval composers probably had no rigid expectations about performance media. Until the 17th century, and even through the 19th in the case of domestic performance, choice of instruments was likely to be dependent as much on available performers as on anything else. Many sources do, however, indicate that medieval musicians tended to separate instruments into two groups, loud and soft ( haut and bas , or, very generally, wind and string ), and to prefer contrasting sonorities within those groups for maximum differentiation of the individual parts. Outdoor or ceremonial music would be performed with loud instruments (shawm, bombard, trombone, organ); room music, with soft ones (lute, viol, recorder, harp). Paintings and manuscript illuminations of the period show that much secular performance included both a wide variety of bells, drums, and other percussion instruments and instruments with drones—bagpipes, fiddles, double recorders, hurdy-gurdies. The parts for these instruments are never found in the musical sources and must be reconstructed for modern performance.

The notation of medieval music often is misleading for the modern performer. Accidentals (sharps and flats, called then musica ficta ) were often omitted as being understood. Further, it seems likely that variation, embellishment, and improvisation were very important elements of medieval performance. It is known that sections of some 15th-century two-part vocal music were enhanced by an extempore third part, in a technique called fauxbourdon ; the notation of the 15th-century basse danse consisted of only a single line of unmeasured long notes, evidently used by the performing group of three instrumentalists for improvisation, much as a modern jazz combo’s chart.

The very concept of improvisation as a mere subcategory within performance practice could arise only after the invention of music printing , which had at first little discernible effect on performance. Extemporized ornamentation of polyphonic music continued and increased during the 16th century in instrumental, vocal, and combined performance, both secular and sacred. Later in the century, liturgical music again became less extravagant in the wake of the Council of Trent (1545–63), which ordered that masses be sung “clearly and at the right speed” and that singing “be constituted not to give empty pleasure to the ear, but in such a way that the words may be clearly understood by all.” Music printing was at first too expensive to alter seriously the social structure of musical performance; the traditions of ostentation and exclusiveness embodied in music written by Guillaume Dufay for the early 15th-century Burgundian court were continued in the magnificent musical establishments of the Italian Renaissance princes and popes. Detailed records exist of the elaborate musical festivities arranged for weddings and baptisms of the powerful Florentine family, the Medici . Printing increased the dissemination as well as the survival of these works; but, like the earlier Burgundian chanson and unlike the contemporary Parisian chanson, which was cast in a more popular mould, they were nonetheless primarily intended for a select group of discriminating performers.

Printing, both of music and of books, does document the ever increasing development and sophistication of instrumental music during the 16th century. Printed descriptions of instruments date from the 16th century. Their discussions of tuning and technique supplied the needs of professional and nonprofessional musicians alike. There was a growing tendency to construct instruments in families (whole consorts of homogeneous timbre, high, middle, and low), a tendency perhaps related to recent expansion at both ends of the musical scale: with more space available, contrapuntal parts no longer crossed so frequently and no longer needed the differentiation provided by the markedly contrasting timbres of the medieval “broken consort.”

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The Oxford Handbook of Music and Medievalism

Stephen C. Meyer holds a PhD from Stony Brook University and worked for many years in the Department of Art and Music Histories at Syracuse University. He is currently a professor of musicology at the College-Conservatory of Music of the University of Cincinnati. He is the author of Carl Maria von Weber and the Search for a German Opera (Indiana University Press, 2003) and Epic Sound: Music in Postwar Hollywood Biblical Films (Indiana University Press, 2014) and the editor of Music in Epic Film: Listening to Spectacle (Routledge, 2016). In addition, he has published articles in numerous scholarly journals, including the Journal of the American Musicological Society, 19th-Century Music, The Musical Quarterly, and the Cambridge Opera Journal. From 2014 until 2018, he also served as the editor in chief of the Journal of Music History Pedagogy.

Kirsten Yri is an associate professor of musicology at Wilfrid Laurier University. She has maintained an interest in medievalism since her dissertation, “Medieval Uncloistered: Uses of Medieval Music in Late Twentieth-Century Culture.” She has published a series of articles on the medieval music revival in Early Music, American Music, Women and Music, and A Companion to Guillaume de Machaut. Her articles on medievalism and rock music appear in Current Musicology, Intersections, Popular Music, and postmedieval. She is currently writing a monograph on the musical aesthetic of parody in works by Carl Orff.

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Medievalism—broadly construed as the retrospective immersion in the images, sounds, narratives, and ideologies of the European Middle Ages—has left a powerful mark in both art music and popular music culture of the past two centuries. The Oxford Handbook of Music and Medievalism provides a snapshot of the growing field of medievalism in music by bringing together international scholars to explore a wide variety of past and present genres in which medievalism is present. The handbook is organized into six sections and takes up musical topics in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, in genres as far reaching as opera, orchestral music, film, musicals, heavy metal, folk rock, and video games.

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Medieval Music

Introduction.

• Edited Collections
• Reference Works
• Music Journals
• Guides to Manuscripts and Repertories
• Facsimiles and Manuscript Studies
• Notation and Gregorian Semiology
• Textual Criticism
• Music Editions (Series)
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• Music Theory
• Latin Poetry
• Overviews and Guides to Liturgy
• Gregorian Chant
• Roman Chant
• Chant Transmission and Composition
• Regional Chant Repertories
• Sequences, Versified Offices
• Liturgical Drama
• Monophony apart from Chant
• Early Polyphony to 1200
• Polyphony and Related Music of the 13 th Century
• Polyphony and Vernacular Music of the 14th Century
• Instrumental Music
• Compositional Process
• Performance Practice
• Music and the Visual Arts
• Music in Cultural Contexts
• Postmedieval Reception

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Medieval Music by Mary E. Wolinski , James Borders LAST REVIEWED: 26 February 2020 LAST MODIFIED: 26 February 2020 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199757824-0269

Medieval music generally refers to western European music between the late 8th and early 15th centuries, although topics concerning Christian liturgy and plainchant reach further back into history. The Latin-Christian realms considered here include Britain ranging from England to St. Andrews, Scotland, the Frankish Empire from France to central Europe, the Spanish territories of Galicia, León, Castile, and Catalonia, the Mediterranean region, Sicily, and the Italian peninsula. Questions of how the music of these peoples was composed, conceived, performed, and preserved during this lengthy period are as many and diverse as the backgrounds and interests of those seeking answers. During the early Middle Ages, music was transmitted orally and the churches of different regions had distinctive liturgies and chants. With the unification of the Christian Church under the Carolingians around the turn of the 9th century, chant came to be written down, early musical notation serving as a memory aid. The relationship of Frankish and other regional chant repertories to that of the papal city of Rome, various attempts to regularize Western plainchant, and the music theory that developed to comprehend it are among the most extensively studied topics of chant scholarship. Religious songs other than chant were also sung, often outside of Church services, in Latin or such vernacular languages as Galician, German, Czech, English, Italian, and Hebrew. Numerous love songs were written in Old Occitan, French, and German. Starting in the 9th century, polyphonic arrangements of chants called organum emerged. In the 12th century, one encounters polyphonic settings of strophic Latin poems called versus and conductus . Sacred polyphony was by then performed at a number of centers, although the organum and conductus composed for Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in the late 12th and early 13th centuries were the most widely disseminated and stylistically influential genres of their time. Toward the end of the Middle Ages, new genres of polyphonic composition emerged, notably the motet, various French and Italian secular songs, and Mass Ordinary movements. Instrumental music had existed since earliest times but it came to be notated only in the late 13th century in the form of monophonic dance tunes. Most composers of medieval sacred monophony are unknown except for certain authors of hymns, sequences, and chants. The courtly troubadours, trouvères, and Minnesänger are however often identified in manuscript song collections. By the 12th century, composers of polyphony like Leonin and Perotin were known and praised.

Music Theory Academy

Medieval music.

Monophonic Music

The vast majority of medieval music was monophonic – in other words, there was only a single melody line. (“mono-phonic” literally means “one sound”) . The development of polyphonic music (more than one melody line played at the same time (“poly-phonic” means “many sounds”)) was a major shift towards the end of era that laid the foundations for Renaissance styles of music.

Gregorian chant

Gregorian chant, consisting of a single line of vocal melody, unaccompanied in free rhythm was one of the most common forms of medieval music. This is not surprising, given the importance of the Catholic church during the period. The Mass (a commemoration and celebration of The Last Supper of Jesus Christ) was (and still is to this day) a ceremony that included set texts (liturgy), which were spoken and sung.

Have a listen to this example of Gregorian Chant:

Play Procedamus in Pace By Paterm (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons]

The chants were also based on a system of modes , which were characteristic of the medieval period. There were 8 church modes – (you can play them by starting on a different white note on a piano and playing a “scale” of 8 notes on just the white notes. For example, if you start on a D and play all the white notes up to the next D an octave higher, you will have played the “Dorian Mode”) .

The Development of Polyphonic Music

As the Medieval Period progressed, composers began to experiment and polyphonic styles began to develop.

Organum was a crucial early technique, which explored polyphonic texture. It consisted of 2 lines of voices in varying heterophonic textures . The 3 main types of organum are:

Parallel organum (or “strict organum”) One voice sings the melody, whilst the other sings at a fixed interval – this gives a parallel motion effect. Have a listen to this synthesised example of parallel organum: Parallel Organum audio example

Free organum The 2 voices move in both parallel motion and/or contrary motion. Have a look at this example of free organum and listen to the track of the beginning being played on a synthesised choir sound:

Free Organum audio example

Melismatic organum An accompanying part stays on a single note whilst the other part moves around above it. Have a listen to this synthesised example – notice how the 2nd voice stays on the same note whilst the 1st voice “sings” the melody: Melismatic Organum audio example

Sheet Music in the Medieval Period

The Catholic Church wanted to standardise what people sung in churches across the Western world. As a result, a system of music notation developed, allowing things to move on from the previously “aural” tradition (tunes passed on “by ear” and not written down) .

As the medieval period prgressed, nuemes developed gradually to add more indication of rhythm, etc..

Instruments of the Medieval Period

There were a number of characteristic instruments of the Medieval Period including:

Other medieval instruments included the recorder and the lute.

The period was also characterised by troubadours and trouvères – these were travelling singers and performers.

Secular Styles of Medieval Music

Ars Nova (“new art”) was a new style of music originating in France and Italy in the 14th century . The name comes from a tract written by Philippe de Vitry in c.1320 . The style was characterised by increased variety of rhythm, duple time and increased freedom and independence in part writing. These experimentations laid some of the foundations for further musical development during the Renaissance period . The main secular genre of Art Nova was the chanson . Examples of Art Nova composers include Machaut in France and G. Da Cascia, J. Da Bologna and Landini in Italy.

Recommended Medieval Music Listening

It is quite difficult to find many recorded albums of medieval music, which offer a range of styles. There is an album called “Discover Early Music” that has some fantastic recordings of plainchant and organum in particular. You should be able to find the album by searching on the amazon store. Hope this helps.

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About The Author

Ben Dunnett LRSM is the founder of Music Theory Academy. He is a music teacher, examiner, composer and pianist with over twenty years experience in music education. Read More

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• T. J. H. McCarthy 2  

The philosophical background to music in the Middle Ages was ultimately derived from Classical ideas about music, its rudiments, and its place in society. The fact that early medieval thinkers in the West looked in the first place to ancient learning to codify their newly emerging ecclesiastical song (which would ultimately become known as by them as “Gregorian chant”) led to a conflict between the theory of ancient music and the reality of music in the Middle Ages. The uneasy cohabitation of ancient philosophical and cosmological thought with the new and different practical music of the medieval West is an ever-present feature of medieval theoretical literature on music. The extent and importance of this conflict varies from century to century and according to the aims of the theoretical literature in question.

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Essays on Medieval Music in Honor of David G. Hughes

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This collection of nineteen essays presents a broad spectrum of current research that will interest students of medieval music, history, or culture. Topics include a comparison of early chant transmission in Rome and Jerusalem; the relationship between the earliest chant notation and prosodic accents; conceptualizing rhythm in medieval music and poetry; the persistence of Guidonian organum in the later Middle Ages; a connection between Dante and St. Cecilia; and the development of the trecento madrigal. The essays, written by distinguished scholars, stem from a conference in honor of David G. Hughes, professor of medieval music at Harvard University and noted specialist of chant.

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Medieval Music: A Guide to Research and Resources

Surveys of medieval music.

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• "Medieval Music" in Oxford Bibliographies Online by Mary Wolinski & James Borders Publication Date: February 2020 Major sections include: General Overviews; Reference Works & Journals; Music Theory; Latin Poetry; Western Plainchant; Monophony apart from Chant; Polyphony; Instrumental Music; Musicians; Compositional Process; Performance Practice; Music and the Visual Arts; Music in Cultural Contexts; and Postmedieval Reception.
• "Medievalism and Music" in Oxford Bibliographies Online by James Cook & Karen Cook Publication Date: March 2018 Article concerns the cultural and intellectual afterlife of medieval music and the Middle Ages" by considering the intersection of medievalism and music in the revival and reception of medieval music; in popular music; on stage and screen; in literature; in constructs of race and ethnicity; gender; disability; religion; and nationality/geography.
• Medieval by Christopher Page Publication Date: January 2001 Divides into main sections: Terminology; Historiography; Defining "Medieval Music," Over 20 years out of date (especially bibliography) but still a valuable survey of the period.
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Music was an essential part of civic, religious, and courtly life in the Renaissance. The rich interchange of ideas in Europe, as well as political, economic, and religious events in the period 1400–1600 led to major changes in styles of composing, methods of disseminating music, new musical genres, and the development of musical instruments. The most important music of the early Renaissance was composed for use by the church—polyphonic (made up of several simultaneous melodies) masses and motets in Latin for important churches and court chapels. By the end of the sixteenth century, however, patronage had broadened to include the Catholic Church, Protestant churches and courts, wealthy amateurs, and music printing—all were sources of income for composers.

The early fifteenth century was dominated initially by English and then Northern European composers. The Burgundian court was especially influential, and it attracted composers and musicians from all over Europe. The most important of these was Guillaume Du Fay (1397–1474), whose varied musical offerings included motets and masses for church and chapel services, many of whose large musical structures were based on existing Gregorian chant. His many small settings of French poetry display a sweet melodic lyricism unknown until his era. With his command of large-scale musical form, as well as his attention to secular text-setting, Du Fay set the stage for the next generations of Renaissance composers.

By about 1500, European art music was dominated by Franco-Flemish composers, the most prominent of whom was Josquin des Prez (ca. 1450–1521). Like many leading composers of his era, Josquin traveled widely throughout Europe, working for patrons in Aix-en-Provence, Paris, Milan, Rome, Ferrara, and Condé-sur-L’Escaut. The exchange of musical ideas among the Low Countries, France, and Italy led to what could be considered an international European style. On the one hand, polyphony or multivoiced music, with its horizontal contrapuntal style, continued to develop in complexity. At the same time, harmony based on a vertical arrangement of intervals, including thirds and sixths, was explored for its full textures and suitability for accompanying a vocal line. Josquin’s music epitomized these trends, with Northern-style intricate polyphony using canons, preexisting melodies, and other compositional structures smoothly amalgamated with the Italian bent for artfully setting words with melodies that highlight the poetry rather than masking it with complexity. Josquin, like Du Fay, composed primarily Latin masses and motets, but in a seemingly endless variety of styles. His secular output included settings of courtly French poetry, like Du Fay, but also arrangements of French popular songs, instrumental music, and Italian frottole.

With the beginning of the sixteenth century, European music saw a number of momentous changes. In 1501, a Venetian printer named Ottaviano Petrucci published the first significant collection of polyphonic music, the Harmonice Musices Odhecaton A . Petrucci’s success led eventually to music printing in France, Germany, England, and elsewhere. Prior to 1501, all music had to be copied by hand or learned by ear; music books were owned exclusively by religious establishments or extremely wealthy courts and households. After Petrucci, while these books were not inexpensive, it became possible for far greater numbers of people to own them and to learn to read music.

At about the same period, musical instrument technology led to the development of the viola da gamba , a fretted, bowed string instrument. Amateur European musicians of means eagerly took up the viol, as well as the lute , the recorder , the harpsichord (in various guises, including the spinet and virginal), the organ , and other instruments. The viola da gamba and recorder were played together in consorts or ensembles and often were produced in families or sets, with different sizes playing the different lines. Publications by Petrucci and others supplied these players for the first time with notated music (as opposed to the improvised music performed by professional instrumentalists). The sixteenth century saw the development of instrumental music such as the canzona, ricercare, fantasia, variations, and contrapuntal dance-inspired compositions, for both soloists and ensembles, as a truly distinct and independent genre with its own idioms separate from vocal forms and practical dance accompaniment.

The musical instruments depicted in the studiolo of Duke Federigo da Montefeltro of Urbino (ca. 1479–82; 39.153 ) represent both his personal interest in music and the role of music in the intellectual life of an educated Renaissance man. The musical instruments are placed alongside various scientific instruments, books, and weapons, and they include a portative organ, lutes, fiddle, and cornetti; a hunting horn; a pipe and tabor; a harp and jingle ring; a rebec; and a cittern .

From about 1520 through the end of the sixteenth century, composers throughout Europe employed the polyphonic language of Josquin’s generation in exploring musical expression through the French chanson, the Italian madrigal, the German tenorlieder, the Spanish villancico, and the English song, as well as in sacred music. The Reformation and Counter-Reformation directly affected the sacred polyphony of these countries. The Protestant revolutions (mainly in Northern Europe) varied in their attitudes toward sacred music, bringing such musical changes as the introduction of relatively simple German-language hymns (or chorales) sung by the congregation in Lutheran services. Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525/26–1594), maestro di cappella at the Cappella Giulia at Saint Peter’s in Rome, is seen by many as the iconic High Renaissance composer of Counter-Reformation sacred music, which features clear lines, a variety of textures, and a musically expressive reverence for its sacred texts. The English (and Catholic) composer William Byrd (1540–1623) straddled both worlds, composing Latin-texted works for the Catholic Church, as well as English-texted service music for use at Elizabeth I ‘s Chapel Royal.

Sixteenth-century humanists studied ancient Greek treatises on music , which discussed the close relationship between music and poetry and how music could stir the listener’s emotions. Inspired by the classical world, Renaissance composers fit words and music together in an increasingly dramatic fashion, as seen in the development of the Italian madrigal and later the operatic works of Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643). The Renaissance adaptation of a musician singing and accompanying himself on a stringed instrument, a variation on the theme of Orpheus, appears in Renaissance artworks like Caravaggio’s Musicians ( 52.81 ) and Titian ‘s Venus and the Lute Player ( 36.29 ).

Arkenberg, Rebecca. “Music in the Renaissance.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/renm/hd_renm.htm (October 2002)

Additional Essays by Rebecca Arkenberg

• Arkenberg, Rebecca. “ Renaissance Violins .” (October 2002)
• Arkenberg, Rebecca. “ Renaissance Keyboards .” (October 2002)
• Arkenberg, Rebecca. “ Renaissance Organs .” (October 2002)

Related Essays

• Painting in Italian Choir Books, 1300–1500
• Renaissance Keyboards
• Renaissance Organs
• Art and Love in the Italian Renaissance
• Burgundian Netherlands: Court Life and Patronage
• Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) (1571–1610) and His Followers
• Courtship and Betrothal in the Italian Renaissance
• The Development of the Recorder
• Elizabethan England
• Flemish Harpsichords and Virginals
• Food and Drink in European Painting, 1400–1800
• Gardens in the French Renaissance
• Joachim Tielke (1641–1719)
• Music in Ancient Greece
• Northern Italian Renaissance Painting
• The Printed Image in the West: History and Techniques
• The Reformation
• Renaissance Violins
• Sixteenth-Century Painting in Venice and the Veneto
• The Spanish Guitar
• Titian (ca. 1485/90?–1576)
• Violin Makers: Nicolò Amati (1596–1684) and Antonio Stradivari (1644–1737)
• Woodcut Book Illustration in Renaissance Italy: Venice in the Sixteenth Century

List of Rulers

• List of Rulers of Europe
• Central Europe (including Germany), 1400–1600 A.D.
• Florence and Central Italy, 1400–1600 A.D.
• France, 1400–1600 A.D.
• Great Britain and Ireland, 1400–1600 A.D.
• Iberian Peninsula, 1400–1600 A.D.
• Low Countries, 1400–1600 A.D.
• Rome and Southern Italy, 1400–1600 A.D.
• Venice and Northern Italy, 1400–1600 A.D.
• 15th Century A.D.
• European Decorative Arts
• High Renaissance
• Musical Instrument
• Northern Renaissance
• Percussion Instrument
• Plucked String Instrument
• Renaissance Art
• String Instrument
• Wind Instrument

Artist or Maker

• Amati, Andrea
• Amati, Nicolò
• Beham, Hans Sebald
• Cuntz, Steffan
• Hauslaib, Lorenz
• Rauchwolff, Sixtus
• Ruckers, Hans, the Elder
• Vell, Georg

Online Features

• The Artist Project: “Cory Arcangel on the harpischord”
• MetMedia: “Double” from the Sarabande of Partita no. 1 in B minor by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) and Gigue from Partita No. 2 in D minor by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Medieval Studies and Research: Medieval Liturgy and Devotional Texts

• Medieval Manuscripts at USC
• Antiphonaries, Breviaries, & Psalters: Connections to Books of Hours & other Liturgical Texts
• Antiphonaries, Breviaries, and Psalters at USC
• Anthologies, Archives, Catalogues, Collections & Digital Projects
• Incunabula at USC - Getting Started
• Incunabula at USC - Listing by Name of Author: A-J
• Incunabula at USC - Listing by Name of Author: K-Z
• Dictionaries and Glossaries: Getting Started
• Getting Started: Databases & Journals
• Getting Started: Associations, Blogs, Handbooks
• Manuscript Studies
• Illuminated Manuscripts - Studies, History
• Manuscripts - Published Catalogs
• Medieval Liturgy and Devotional Texts
• Books of Hours and The Medieval Calendar
• Books of Hours - Resources for Research
• Manuscripts: Art & Techniques
• Medieval Society: Women, Gender, and Family Life
• Medieval World: Economy, History, Law, Politics
• Atlases & Maps
• Teaching & Learning with Manuscripts & Other Rare Materials

About this Page

This page is intended to serve as an introduction to research on medieval liturgy and devotional literature. In addition to searches in our databases, an Advanced Search in our  USC Libraries' online catalog , yields a significant number of titles:

Select: Advanced Search . and restrict your search to Catalog   then Type:

  Liturgy AND Medieval   and, for each keyword,  select the field: Subject  

  Devotional literature AND Medieval   and  select the field: Subject

Early Church Documents

Guide to Early Church Documents  - includes canonical documents, creeds, the writings of the Apostolic Fathers and other historical texts relevant to Church history.

Patrologia Latina   Extensive collection of early Christian Latin texts (from Tertullian ( c. 155 – c. 240? AD)  to the death of Pope Innocent III (who reigned from 1198 to his death in  1216). The entire collection is in Latin with no English translation.

Databases: Liturgical Chants, Planchant Melodies, Polyphonic Music,

Cantus: A Database for Latin Ecclesiastical Chant -  A database of the Latin chants found in manuscripts and early printed books, primarily from medieval Europe. This searchable digital archive holds inventories of antiphoners and breviaries -- the main sources for the music sung in the Latin liturgical Office -- as well as graduals and other sources for music of the Mass.

Cantus Planus -  A resource for the study of Gregorian chant. Includes databases. full-text, and links to Chant Archives. A collaborative intiative of the Universität Regensburg - Institut für Musikwissenschaft, and the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Wien - Institut für kunst- und musikhistorische Forschungen. 

Chant Behind the Dikes - Dedicated to the medieval liturgy of the Low Countries and its manuscript sources. Aims at mapping the liturgy and the liturgical chant of this area. For the Table of Contents click here. This website is to be used as a hypertext: Churches, their liturgical manuscripts (and, occasionally early prints) and their saints are linked to each other. The material is accessible by several entries: codological, ecclesiastical, and  musical.   Includes direct links to other sites.

DIAMM (the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music) -    A portal to worldwide collections of medieval polyphonic music manuscripts. "From its beginnings in 1998, the purpose of the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music (DIAMM) was to obtain and archive digital images of European sources of medieval polyphonic music, captured directly from the original document. The purposes were (1) conservation and protection against loss, especially of vulnerable fragments, and (2) to enable libraries to supply the best possible quality of images to scholars.(...) The sources archived include all the currently known sources of polyphony up to 1550 in the UK (almost all sources up to 1450 are available for study through this website); all the ‘complete’ manuscripts in the UK; a small number of important representative manuscripts from continental Europe; a significant portion of fragments from 1300-1450 from Belgium, France, Italy, Switzerland and Spain."

Global Chant - A searchable database of plainchant melodies and texts included in medieval sources and new editions. It serves as a simple tool for searching information on Gregorian chant and other medieval monody including sacred songs. The database contains almost 25.000 records of chant incipits that provide information about text, melody, genre, modus and concordances in new editions and other on-line databases. Some of the records include also hypertext links to facsimiles where a particular chant can be found.

Medieval Music Database   (Last updated: 2007)  - Texts (more than 70,000 works) of liturgical chant from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries and the texts of polyphonic songs of the fourteenth century can be searched by full text, composer, genre, and liturgical feast. Includes transcriptions with modern music notation (where melodic information is available),original manuscripts where possible, and links to the electronic editions themselves.

Liturgical Resources

Celebrating the Liturgy's Books: Medieval & Renaissance MS in NYC - A resource prepared for the 2002 annual meeting of the Medieval Academy of America. It contains images from manuscripts in New York City collections, illustrated glossaries, audio clips of liturgical musical forms, a bibliography, and links to Web-based resources on ecclesiastical chant.

Cursus: An Online Resource of Medieval Liturgical Texts - A project housed at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, to make data from sources of medieval Latin liturgy available on the Internet using XML.   For the searchable repository of antiphons, responds, and prayers as well as selected liturgical manuscripts, click here . 

Liturgia Latina .  Includes digital versions of the traditional Latin liturgy and related documents of the Roman Catholic Church. Links to related sites are also provided.

Related Research Guides

Medieval Bible , by Debra Cashion (Knights of Columbus Vatican Film Library, Saint Louis University).

Medieval Liturgy , by Debra Cashion (Knights of Columbus Vatican Film Library, Saint Louis University).

Devotional Texts

Manuscripts and Medieval Music Studies

Medieval Studies Bibliographies - Medieval Liturgy , by Charles D. Wright. An important resource for research and studies.

The Medieval Mass and Its Music, by Joseph Dyer (in The ORB – Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies) .The present essay describes the Mass as celebrated in Latin Christianity during the Middle Ages. It assumes the full complement of clergy (priests, clerics in what are known as "minor orders," and non-clerical assistants) needed to carry out the complex ceremonies of the Mass at a cathedral or large monastic church. A choir of monks or canons under the direction of the cantor provided all of the music, solo and choral. This would have been sung in chant but occasionally embellished by simple improvised polyphony. In a house of women religious all of the musical roles would have been assumed by the nuns, but ecclesiastical custom required that the ministers serving at the altar be male./ The form and essential components of the medieval Mass were stabilized during the Carolingian era, thanks largely the organizing zeal of Charlemagne and the efforts of monastic liturgists like Alcuin and Benedict of Aniane. This Franco-Roman liturgy, as it is known to modern scholars, spread throughout Europe, carried to the North by missionaries who preached the Christian faith to Germanic tribes. (…)

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