[Music] hi everyone ben here from musictheoryacademy.com in this series of lessons we're going to be having a look at the periods of music and we're going to begin our journey today by looking at medieval music now the medieval period runs from around about the year 500 to the year 1400 so it covers a massive 900 years and it runs right through from around the time of the fall of the western roman empire to right through to the beginning of the renaissance so let's jump straight in and let's have a listen to an example of medieval music [Music] is [Music] you can hear from that example a number of different key elements that you can pick out firstly it's a solo performance there's only one line of music we call this monophonic meaning literally mono one phonic sound one sound and that's very typical of medieval music the second thing you notice is that it's very much sounds like it's in a church it's from the sung mass the language is in latin and it's it's got that sort of feel of a gregorian chant so it's another key fingerprint as it were of the style that we're listening to you can also hear that it's it doesn't sound like it's in a major or minor scale it's in something different it's in what's called a mode and there were eight different modes that were used in medieval music this was before major and minor scales had been developed you'll still hear modes uh played today often in in folk music but most of the music that you hear nowadays is in either a major or a minor scale but back in the medieval times this was before those were developed so you've got three key things that that you can hear from that piece of music and for many people that's where their understanding of medieval music ends and it's like yes it's it's vocal music sung in latin inner mode that's medieval music but actually it's it's a period that covers 900 years and there were lots of changes and developments during that time so it's good to have a bit more of an understanding of that period of music so what were these experiments and developments that went on during the time well one of the key things they tried to do was to try and extend the music so instead of it just being monophonic so one sound they wanted to try and develop a polyphonic sound something that had more than one line of melody and one of the key ways they tried to do this was through something called organum now organum was the addition of another line of voice so you had two lines of voices and there were three main ways they they experimented with this the first was this thing called parallel organum in parallel organum you've got two voices at a fixed interval so here i've got two voices at the interval of a fifth um and one voice sings the melody while the other stays at that fixed interval and they move around [Music] in a parallel fashion you can see that that interval [Music] of the fifth is is staying the same so that's parallel organum or otherwise known as strict organum now in free organum the two voices uh can move in both parallel motion and contrary motion so parallel motion we've seen is where they're moving in the same direction but contrary motion is where they can move apart and you can see how you start to get a little bit more creativity a bit more variety in free organum now melismatic organum is a little bit different the accompanying part stays on one note whilst the other part can move around above it and you can see how it's starting to develop so you can see how composers were experimenting and trying to move away from this simple uh monophonic sound and you had these early developments of a polyphonic sound but what other developments did we have well we had developments in sheet music so the catholic church there was lots of different singing going on around all the different churches and they want to stand wanted to standardize the music that was being sung in churches and the way they did this was they brought in these things called names and the wayms were like early forms of sheet music and they gave an indication of uh the which way the pitch was going the movement of pitch and throughout the period these names developed and they had more and more of information on them um so they had some indication of rhythm in many ways this was the early forerunner of the sheep music that we see today there are also developments in instruments and we have the medieval flute let's have a listen to how that sounds you can hear how in many ways it sounds like um a contemporary recorder because it's wooden uh in its feel you also had the lyra this is seen as being one of the first bowed uh string instruments in the western classical tradition and then also you have the dulcimer here's how the dorchama sounds [Music] so you can see that the medieval period was not just vocal music and there were other instruments as well during that time but it was also not just church music during that time um some secular music developed um you've got the troubadours and the truvaires who were these traveling performers um who went round performing uh their music you also had this new development called ars nova or new art which was developed in 14th century uh france and italy um and you've got this sort of increase of rhythm you've got increase of independence of hearts the name comes from a tract written by philippe de vitri in around about 13 13 20 and you can just imagine the controversy at the time over this over this new art this uh this new style that was developing so we started with these three elements the the solo sound the church song mass the mode but we've seen that actually there are other fingerprints of the medieval music style we've got this early attempts at polyphony um and the the organum that comes with that you've got the sheep music the very early names that the catholic church were bringing in to try and standardize the music being sung you've got instruments the flutes the lyra and the dulcimer and then also you've got this development of secular music um that there was the music was not just the music that you sung in church but you've also got the troubadours and the true bears i really hope that's given you a good understanding of the basics of the medieval period of music head over to musictheoryacademy.com and you'll find more resources some more detailed information and some recommended listening on the period the next stage on our journey takes us to the wonders of the renaissance period