The History of Music - 3

The Middle Ages 1300s

As I said in the last segments there were two defining moments in history during the 1300s and they were The Great Schism and The Black Plague. These vents caused a lot of trouble for the Catholic church prior to the Renaissance as the people began to lose faith in church leadership. And then on top of this the 1300s are defined by the Black Plague. Europe loses some one-third of its population and unbelievable devastation that is difficult to understand.

These defining cultural events had an impact on musical development. You will see the cutting-edge avant-guard music at this time centered around rich cities usually protected by the church. The countryside however was not able to participate in the technologies and musical concepts of the city and most were most likely unaware of Gregorian Chant.

Some of the new musical concepts introduced by Phillipe DeVitry and Franco Cologne were divisions of note and values as well time signatures. In written music the circle and the dot stood for perfection and all the note values would be divided into three.

The higher levels would be divided into three and the lower levels of the music would be divided into twos or sometimes visa-verse. You would see evidence of 9/8, 6/8, or 2/4 divided into triplets. The now common meter 2/4 was also developed.

Another invention was with the use of color. When notation was first developed in chant the first line, or the chant line, or the C-Line, might be the color of red and when they added the F-Line the color might be yellow in place of actually writing the F or C note since actual notes were not invented yet. The color also informed the performer if they were singing perfect or imperfect meter.

Isoryhytmic Motets were developed in the Ars Nova and became the dominant form of composition and eventually influenced the masses of musical composers. You may recall what a Motet is. The origin was mainly a trope that eventually became its own piece and by this time Motets have very little relation left over from the original chant other than using a few belts from some chant and building a new piece on it.

Isorhythm basically refers to a device that you would use in the tenor voice. You may recall the tenor had been the original chant. And basically what you would do is that you would have a repeating rhythmic pattern and a repeating pitch pattern. The rhythm was known as the Talea. If you are familiar with Indian Music, as in North India, they refer to the rhythm as the tal so it's actually a connected word. So the rhythm was the Talea and the pitch was the Colour. Basically you would establish some sort of repeating pattern, which was the Talea, and then you would have a series of pitches you would use that was probably part of the original chant. Now these may or may not coincide as you might have a situation when the rhythm may not change with the colour.

Next up an analysis of Garrit Gallus - In Nova Fert - N[uema], Motet by Phillpe de Vitry (1291-1361)

Later,

John