Medieval Music

Introduction

Music in the Middle Ages was almost a lost art form as no real historic details were recorded of day to day song.  The music that field workers would have sung, that street performers would have played, that was created for the stage and the music of the traveling musician have all been lost.  Even the sparse collection of mostly church music that was notated, was done in such a way that modern musicians will never fully understand how these pieces would have sounded.  Medieval notation was frustratingly vague by today’s standards, and thus the musician of the Middle Ages was expected to be able to improvise, to change the instrumentation, the key or even the tempo of a song in an instant.  Yet the music that has survived has provided a musical history of life in the Middle Ages.  From one line monophonic themes, to intricate polyphonic vocal pieces containing many interwoven parts, music was as important to life in Medieval times as it is today. Music in the Middle Ages was colored by the range of primitive musical instruments available to musicians then.  Most were early incarnations of guitars and other stringed instruments, or basic wind instruments.

The Lute

The lute was a stringed instrument, a direct ancestor to the modern day guitar. Originally from the Arab countries, it made its way into medieval England presumably through the Crusades.  An early medieval lute would have originally had four strings however over the centuries it gradually gained more and more strings and by the Fifteenth Century a typical lute could have up to ten strings.  The lute looked like a cross section of a pear, made from wood, with a hollow body, a short wide neck depending on the number of strings and no head.  The lack of a head produced an incredible difficulty when trying to tune the instrument and it was said that a lutenist would spend more time tuning than playing.

The Citole

The citole was a four stringed instrument that resembled a lute, with what could be described as a hollow leaf shaped body.  Incredibly there is a surviving example of a citole from the early 1300’s in the British museum, as it was owned by a noble and was kept as a family heirloom.  However, most citoles were own by common folk during the Middle Ages.  The body and neck were usually carved from the same piece of wood, and the neck was very deep, with a hole pierced in it for the player’s thumb.

The Gittern

The gittern was another stringed instrument closely related to the guitar and earlier incarnations of the lute from the Renaissance period.  It resembled a small lute with a curved sickle shaped head.  The body of a lute was constructed by layering thin pieces of wood to form the body and the neck was attached separately.  In contrast, the gittern was constructed much like the citole and was carved entirely from a single lump of wood.

The Shawm

The shawm was really an early incarnation of the modern oboe.  It was shorter and therefore produced a more high pitched and nasal timbre.  It was not until the early Sixteenth Century that a reed was introduced and the various longer and less harsh sounding models of the shawm were constructed.  Town shawm consorts were made up of the town waits who were equipped with shawms as a means of alerting the town of danger, as shawms were a cheaper alternative to trumpets.  The skills of these town waits as musicians were in such high demand that eventually their roles would change to town musicians, a role which would entail both entertaining during the day and town waiting at night.  This meant that by the late Sixteenth Century anyone wishing to enter an apprenticeship as a town wait would have to first be proficient on at least ten different instruments.

Music Theory

The Middle Ages saw several advances in music theory, the most important in the conception and notation of rhythm.  Music had previously been organized rhythmically into longs or breves (shorts), and with no real regular difference between the two lengths.  Johannes de Garlandia, author of De mensurabili musica in 1240, created, with the introduction of rhythmic modes, a system by which six different rhythmic patterns could be notated by specific successions of note shapes.  The next major evolution came from German theorist Franco of Cologne who proposed that differently shaped notes would have entirely different rhythmic values. This was by far the most important development of musical notation throughout history, and most of the remaining notated music of the Middle Ages was notated this way.

However it was Phillipe de Vitry whose contributions to notation and in particular rhythmic notation gave birth to the modern system of notation that is still used today.  He broke away from the ideas of rhythmic modes, and gave the different notes specific values.  The base note, a breve could then be divided into groups of two or three using a measuration sign, the equivalent of today’s time signature.  This division could be perfect or ternary division or imperfect, binary division.  Perfect division was notated by a complete circle where an imperfect division was shown by a half circle.  This practice is still used today by using a ‘C’ to replace 4/4 time signature, not an abbreviation for common time as it is generally believed.  Vitry wrote this system into the publication he was most famous for, the Ars Nova, the publication which also gave name to the entire musical era.  Due to a lack of evidence of the existence of Phillipe de Vitry, Jehan des Mars is credited with being the first identifiable scholar to explain the rhythmic system of notation, however this does not diminish Vitry’s impact on the evolution of notation in the middle ages.

Medieval Musicians

The life of a medieval musician was much different to the “hero” status composer/musician of the classical and modern day.  Most of the music of the day was church related, and the role of musician was always second to other responsibilities within the church.  There were soloists who were prized for their musical abilities but even for them their music was just another facet by which to serve God.  Even in the secular communities, musicians were always teachers, clerks or court members first.  The performer who relied solely on music for his livelihood often had a low status, for during the Middle Ages it was the music that was most highly regarded, and not the composer or the performer as it was during the classical era and as it is today.  This shows just how much a part of everyday life music was during the Middle Ages, from the lowliest minstrel to the noble musician/teacher and even the priest and other church members, music simply was everywhere.

Reference List:

Internet Sources

1. “Diabolus in Music Guide to Early Instruments”, David Jarratt-Knock
   http://www.diabolus.org/guide/guide-m.htm

2. “Medieval and Renaissance Instruments”
   http://www.music.iastate.edu/antiqua/instrumt.html

3. “Medieval Music” (2006) Wikipedia
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_music

4. ORB (1997) “Introduction to Medieval Music”, Cynthia Cyrus,
   http://www.vanderbilt.edu/~cyrus/ORB/orbmusic.htm