Early music generally comprises Medieval music (500–1400) and Renaissance music (1400–1600) but can also include Baroque music (1600–1750). Early music is a broad musical era for the beginning of Western art music.
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2. Content
1.Beginnings
2.Characteristics of early
art music
3.Monophony
4.Monophony to polyphony
5.Motet
6.Secular music
7.Secular music Instruments
8.Early art music pattern
9.Renaissance
10.Music activity of Renaissance
11.Instruments of renesissa
3. Early music generally comprises
Medieval music (500–1400) and
and Renaissance music (1400–
1600) but can also include
Baroque music (1600–1750).
Early music is a broad musical
era for the beginning ofWestern
Western art music.
Beginnings
4. • Characteristics of early art music:
1. There is no strict rhythm—the music flows in a
manner with no beat;
The words are set almost always one syllable to a
but some syllables have more than a few notes,
melisma;
3. There is no accompaniment or other voice—this is
strictly a one-line melodic progression of notes
to earlier called monophony.
Characteristics
of early
art music
5. Monophony and Polyphony:
Monophony is the simplest of musical textures, consisting of a melody,
typically sung by a single singer or played by a single instrument player
accompanying harmony or chords.
Polyphony means the simultaneous combination of two or more tones or
melodic lines.
Monophony
Beginnings of Monophony
Church spread over the continent of Europe the basic shape of its
worship services formed. In the monasteries the monks and nuns lived their
lives around a daily rendering of worship in the church. From the Bible they
knew about their basis readings , weekly recitation of the Psalms, and regular
prayers. Over time these texts were sung, rather than simply recited.
Scholars debate how the melodies for these texts, referred to as Gregorian
chant, plainsong, or plainchant, came into being. All three of these terms
refer to the same thing. They are called plain because their chief
characteristic is a one-line melody, called monophony. Many hundreds of
these melodies developed by the middle of the sixth century.
6. Monophony to
polyphony
From the single-line chanting of the monks and nuns, music
gradually came to be polyphonic, meaning more than one
one line of music playing simultaneously.The simplest
form of adding another voice is to use a device called a
drone.This is a note or notes that are held while the melody
melody plays.
Polyphony developed For:
while the chant progressed in monophony music it create intervals ,because
monophony is the music with a single melody.This type of interval was was
avoided in sacred music,it was said during this forbidden interval devil
personify himself. this type of thought let music as a combination of voices
rather than a single line. Polyphony can be said to have arisen from
this practice.
Beginnings of polyphony:
7. InWestern classical music, a motet is a mainly vocal musical
composition, of highly diverse form and style, from the high
medieval music to the present.The motet was one of the pre-eminent
polyphonic forms of Renaissance music.The late 13th-century
theorist Johannes de Grocheo believed that the motet was "not to be
celebrated in the presence of common people, because they do not
notice its subtlety, nor are they delighted in hearing it, but in the
presence of the educated and of those who are seeking out subtleties
in the arts"
Motet
8. • Middle Ages comes to
us through
contemporaneous
popular songs written
about political, religious
and love-related
topics. Some of the most
important musical
innovations of the Middle
Ages came through this
medium.
Secular music is
any music not written for
the church. The earliest
written secular songs, the
Goliard Songs were poems
about women, wine, and
satire and were notated in a
manner that we still cannot
fully decipher
Secular music
9. • These time songs were accompanied by
instruments such as the vielle, the hurdy-
gurdy (for the remainder of the links in this
section, click the image on the web page to
hear an example), and the psaltery
. Other Medieval instruments include the
recorder and transverse flute, the shawm, the
bladder pipe, the serpent, and the lizard.
Secular music Instruments
10. Early art music pattern:
This time human
voice was considered
the prime musical
instrument. Early
Western Art Music
have four general
ranges of singing: the
higher soprano and
lower alto for
women, and the
higher tenor and
lower bass for me’.
Timbre For much of
the early western art
history, the human voice
was the chosen timbre
“Haut” and “bois” were
terms used for
instruments suited for
outdoors (haut/high) and
for indoors (bois/low). In
this case, high and low
refer to the strength of
the tone.
Texture is how the tempo,
melodic, and harmonic
materials are combined in a
musical composition,
determining the overall
quality of the sound in a
piece d a solemn, other-
worldly quality, especially in
sacred music. Secular music
generally sounds thin, as
opposed to resonant, and
does not carry far.
11. Harmonyis often
created through the
superimposition of severa
l melodies.This
way of using multiple
voices is called
polyphony.The scales
used to create these
melodies are known as
modes, slightly different
from the major and minor
tonality that became
established later.
Dynamics were
generally not designated
during the Renaissance.
Because music written at
this time was not created
for wide dissemination, the
composer and those
performing it would have
known what they preferred
in terms of dynamics and
thus they were not
recorded.
Form: refers to the
structure of a musical
composition or
performance. In his
book, Worlds of Music,
Jeff Todd Titon suggests
that several
organizational
elements may
determine the formal
structure of a piece of
music, such as "the
arrangement of musical
units of rhythm,
melody, harmony .
12. Renaissance
Renaissance was a period in European history marking the
transition from the Middle Ages to modernity in the 15th and
16th centuries . Renaissance” is a term meaning “rebirth,”
which implies that things were born anew This time music is
vocal and instrumental music written and performed
Involution of renesissa music
The art of music was influenced by many historical and
artistic advances during this period, including the fall of
Constantinople in 1453, the invention of printing and paper
around the year 1440,
13. Early period (1400-1470)
The key composers from the early Renaissance era also wrote in a late
Medieval style, and as such, they are transitional figures. Leonel Power
(c. 1370s or 1380s–1445) was an English composer of the late medieval
and early Renaissance music eras. Late in the fifteenth century two
characteristics of music emerged and came to predominate. Imitative
counterpoint and homophony.
Printed music was developed by 1501 and made dissemination
and availability much wider. During the 16th century, Josquin
des Prez gradually acquired the reputation as the greatest
composer of the age, his mastery of technique and expression
universally imitated and admired.
Middle period (1470–1530)
14. InVenice, from about 1530 until around 1600, an impressive
polychoral style developed, which gave Europe some of the
grandest, most sonorous music composed up until that time, with
multiple choirs of singers, brass and strings in different spatial
locations in the Basilica San Marco diVenezia (seeVenetian
School)
Palestrina holds a distinct place in sacred music of the Renaissance
.Two main developments during the Renaissance are the madrigal
and secular song.
Upheavals in the Church affected music in divers' ways
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina According to the legend,
Palestrina wrote the “Missa Papae Marcelli” (“Pope Marcellus
Mass”) to argue for keeping polyphony in the Church.
Late period (1530–1600)
Middle period (1470–1530)
15. Music activity
of Renaissance:
Renaissance musicians played a
variety of instruments these can
be broadly classified into haut
(high) and bas (low)
instruments—that is, loud and
soft. Haut instruments would be
suitable for playing outdoors,
bas for indoors. Until the end of
the sixteenth century.
16. • Instruments of
Renaissance :Lute
A lute is any plucked string instrument
with a neck and a deep round back
enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with
a sound hole or opening in the body.
17. The violfamily contains instruments in
every range, from soprano as the highest to
bass as the lowest. A group of viols playing
together was referred to as a consort of
viols. The violin was present at this time as a
threestringed instrument used to accompany
dancing, tuned in intervals of fifths rather
than the fourths of the viol.
18. • Pipe organ was growing in
size and complexity. From the
portative (small organ that can
be carried) and positive organs
(larger version of the portative
and on wheels) of the Middle
Ages came fixed instruments
much larger and capable of
grander and more varied
sound.
19. In this period, we have seen Western Art Music progress in two distinct areas: sacred and
secular. Very broadly speaking, during this period music moved from one-voice
monophony to many-voiced polyphony. . The time period of these developments is
approximately 1400-1600 that’s are called renaissance.