Chants
Monophony
Monophony is a musical texture consisting of a single melodic line. It is the oldest type of music,
and is still used today. Gregorian chant is an example of monophony.
-
Kyrie XI
- Gregorian chant
- written by monks whose names do not survive
- "kyrie"s are different in each repetition but "elesion" is the same
- O Viridissima Virga
- plainchant
- Hildegard of Bingen (the earliest named composer in the western tradition)
- in honor of the Virgin Mary
- drone: an instrument with only a single pitch; with a drone it’s easier to recognize overlapping
pitches (give you more of a sense of ambience)
-
Lanquan li jorn
- troubadour song
- Jaufré Rudel
- sung poetry (courtly love); poems in stanzas and the music is strophic: the melody
repeats for each stanza
- accompanied by instrument because he's traveling and performing to people
-
Douce dame jolie
- troubadour song; monophonic chanson
- Guillaume de Machaut
- formes fixes (fixed forms) of medieval French poetry: for the same text you use the same music
Polyphony
Polyphony is a musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody.
Polyphony is the most common texture in Western music. It is also called counterpoint.
-
Alleluia nativitas
- Perotin
- organum: a type of polyphony that is based on plainchant
- melisma: many notes to a single syllable of textt; used for emphasis or ornamentation;
the genre of organum entirely melismatic because no new text is added
- cantus firmus "fixed-song": a pre-existing melody used as the basis for a polyphonic
song
- tenor (the lowest “held” voice in an organum; it was originally a Gregorian chant, now used as a
cantus firmus; this meaning is different from tenor as a male vocal register)
-
Ave Maria
- Josquin des Prez
- motet: composers add words to the melodies in the upper voices. This creates the genre of
the motet; different from organium because it has new text
- imitative polyphony: the same melody is repeated in different voices