The tradition of sung prayers and psalms extends into the shadows of early civilization. Such sacred singing was often accompanied by instruments, and its rhythmic character was marked. In the synagogue, however, the sung prayers were often unaccompanied. Ritual dance was excluded from the synagogue as the rhythmic character of sacred music surrendered its more sensual aspects. Even in the prayers themselves, rhythmic verse gave way to prose. The exclusion of women, the elevation of unison singing, and the exclusion of instruments served to establish a clear differentiation between musical performance in the synagogue and that of the street.

The phrase Middle Ages refers to the period of European history spanning A.

The musical performance tradition of the Christian Church grew out of the liturgical tradition of Judaism. The melodic formulas for the singing of psalms and the sung recitation of other scriptural passages are clearly based on Hebraic models.

1. Most surviving music of the Middle Ages was designed. Most music of the Middle Ages was written for what performing forces? One of the two primary innovations of medieval music led to the rise of harmony, a main feature that distinguishes most Western music from that of other cultures. What was this innovation?
2. Music through the ages: Trends in musical engagement and preferences from adolescence through middle adulthood. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2013; 105 (4): 703 DOI: 10.1037/a0033770.

Music in the Roman Catholic liturgy was performed mainly for the mass. Originally, the music was performed by the priest and the congregation, until, in time, there emerged from the congregation a special group of singers, called the choir, who assumed the musical role of answering and contrasting the solo singing of the priest. Women participated actively in musical performances in the ancient Christian Church until 578, when older Hebraic practices excluding them were restored. From that time until the 20th century, Roman Catholic Church choirs were composed solely of men and boys.

The first codification of early church music was reputedly made by Pope Gregory I during his reign (590–604). Gregory’s collection was selected from chants already in use. His codification assigned these chants to particular services in the liturgical calendar. In general it reinforced the simple, spiritual, aesthetic quality of liturgical music. The music in this collection serves as a model of melodic design even in the 21st century and is regarded as one of the monuments of Western musical literature. This school of unison liturgical singing is called plainchant, plainsong, or Gregorian chant. Specific details concerning the manner in which chant was performed have been lost. There are speculations that the quality of sound the singers employed was somewhat thinner and more nasal than that used by contemporary singers. The authentic rhythmic style of chant cannot be ascertained. There is a theory, however, that the basic rhythmic units had the same durational value and were grouped in irregularly alternating groups of twos and threes. Pitch levels and tempos apparently varied somewhat according to the occasion. There are preserved manuscript notations reminding singers to be careful and modest in their work, indicating that temptations of inattention and excessive vocal display existed for even the earliest liturgical musicians.

While modern musical traditions in the West are based to a large extent on the principles of antiquity preserved in the notated music of the early church, a secular musical practice did exist; but because of the pervasive influence of the church, the dividing line between sacred and secular aspects was thin throughout a good part of the medieval period.

Several types of later secular song have survived. The musical notations are for the most part inadequate to give an accurate impression of the music, but it is known that it retained the essential monophonic character of liturgical music. One curious type of secular song, conductus, originated in the church itself. This song did not use traditional liturgical melodies or texts but was composed to be sung in the liturgical dramas or for processions. For this reason it dealt occasionally with subjects not religious in character. The goliard songs dating from the 11th century are among the oldest examples of secular music. They were the often bawdy Latin songs of itinerant theological students who roamed rather disreputably from school to school in the period preceding the founding of the great university centres in the 13th century.

Several other groups of medieval performers developed literary and musical genres based on vernacular texts: the jongleurs, a group of travelling entertainers in western Europe who sang, did tricks, and danced to earn their living; the troubadours in the south of France and the trouvères in the north; and the minnesingers, a class of artist-knights who wrote and sang love songs tinged with religious fervour.

Instruments, such as the vielle, harp, psaltery, flute, shawm, bagpipe, and drums were all used during the Middle Ages to accompany dances and singing. Trumpets and horns were used by nobility, and organs, both portative (movable) and positive (stationary), appeared in the larger churches. In general, little is known of secular instrumental music before the 13th century. It is doubtful that it had a role of any importance apart from accompaniment. Yet the possibility of accompanied liturgical music has not been eliminated by modern scholars.

The medieval musical development with the furthest-reaching consequences for musical performance was that of polyphony, a development directly related, as indicated above, to the experience of performing liturgical chant. For performers and performance, perhaps the most important developments in the wake of polyphony were refinements of rhythmic notation necessary to keep independent melodic lines synchronous. At first the obvious visual method of vertical alignment was used; later, as upper voices became more elaborate in comparison with the (chant-derived) lower ones, and writing in score thus wasted space, more symbolic methods of notating rhythm developed, most importantly in and around the new cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris.

In the 14th century, partly because of the declining political strength of the church, the setting for new developments in music shifted from the sacred field to the secular, from the church to the court. This shift led in turn to a new emphasis on instrumental music and performance. Already the lower voices began to be performed on instruments—both because their long notes made them difficult to sing and because their texts (of only a few syllables) became senseless outside their original liturgical positions. Now, as secular princes became increasingly important patrons of composers and performers—a situation that would continue well into the 18th century—secular and instrumental music flourished. The polyphonic music of the church merged with the poetic art of the troubadours, and the two most important composers of the age were the blind Florentine organist Francesco Landini and the French poet Guillaume de Machaut, canon of Reims.

Most of the music of these composers seems to have been intended for combined vocal-instrumental performance, although this is seldom expressly indicated in the manuscripts. Medieval composers probably had no rigid expectations about performance media. Until the 17th century, and even through the 19th in the case of domestic performance, choice of instruments was likely to be dependent as much on available performers as on anything else. Many sources do, however, indicate that medieval musicians tended to separate instruments into two groups, loud and soft (haut and bas, or, very generally, wind and string), and to prefer contrasting sonorities within those groups for maximum differentiation of the individual parts. Outdoor or ceremonial music would be performed with loud instruments (shawm, bombard, trombone, organ); room music, with soft ones (lute, viol, recorder, harp). Paintings and manuscript illuminations of the period show that much secular performance included both a wide variety of bells, drums, and other percussion instruments and instruments with drones—bagpipes, fiddles, double recorders, hurdy-gurdies. The parts for these instruments are never found in the musical sources and must be reconstructed for modern performance.

The notation of medieval music often is misleading for the modern performer. Accidentals (sharps and flats, called then musica ficta) were often omitted as being understood. Further, it seems likely that variation, embellishment, and improvisation were very important elements of medieval performance. It is known that sections of some 15th-century two-part vocal music were enhanced by an extempore third part, in a technique called fauxbourdon; the notation of the 15th-century basse danse consisted of only a single line of unmeasured long notes, evidently used by the performing group of three instrumentalists for improvisation, much as a modern jazz combo’s chart.

Table of Contents :

In the Middle Ages most people lived on a manor . It was a village with a castle, a church and some land around it. The king gave land to his most important noblemen and bishops . They promised to give the king soldiers for his armies.

The lowest people of society were the peasants . They didn't have their own land, but they got land from the lords . The lords also gave them protection . In return, the peasants had to fight for them. This was called the feudal system.

Peasants worked on the land and produced the goods that the lord needed. But they did not lead a very nice life. They had to pay a lot of taxes and give the lord much of what they harvested . The peasants did not even 'belong“ to themselves. When they did something wrong, they were often punished by their lord or by the church. Some peasants were good craftsmen . They built the things that everybody needed. They made cloth , jewellery and, very often, repaired things that were broken.

Peasants in the Middle Ages - Peter d'Aprix - http://www.galleryhistorical.figures.com

Women led a very difficult life in the Middle Ages. They did housework like cooking, baking bread, weaving and spinning . They also hunted for food and fought in battles . They learned to use weapons to defend their homes and castles.

Some medieval women had other jobs . There were women who worked as blacksmiths and merchants . Others worked in the fields or played musical instruments and danced for the king.

Some women were known as witches , who could do magic and heal other people. Many of them were burned. Others became nuns and lived for God.

Food

Poor people didn't get very much to eat. They had to eat dark bread because white bread was only for the king and his family. Only rich people had meat to eat. Mutton and beef were very common and vegetables were also very popular . People liked eating onions , garlic and herbs that they picked from the castle garden. The best way to preserve food was to put salt on it because in those days there were no fridges. There were no plates and forks , so the food was put on flat bread, called trenchers.

Clothing

In the Middle Ages, people usually made their own clothes by spinning or weaving cloth themselves. Sometimes they bought linen to make the clothes they needed. Wool was very common at that time. It was sheared from sheep and then washed. The rich people made more expensive clothes from linen or silk.

Poor women often wore long dresses made of wool. The colours were very dark - brown or grey . They also wore stockings and leather shoes.

The medieval lady wore clothes made of fine silk, wool or fur. They were more colourful than the clothes of the poorer people. In the winter she often wore a fur coat or a cape. Only a rich woman could afford jewellery. She wore shoes that had wooden bottoms with leather on top of them.

Men often wore tunics and trousers and later on stockings that went up their whole legs. Purple was a popular colour for men in the Middle Ages. Fur and velvet were also used a lot on the sides of coats.

Medieval houses and homes

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Most medieval homes were cold, damp and dark. Sometimes it was brighter outside the house than in it. The windows were small, because homeowners didn't want people to look into it.

Many poor families ate, slept and spent their time together in only one or two rooms. The houses had thatched roofs that could easily be destroyed.

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The homes of rich people were fancier than those of the peasants. They had paved floors and tapestries sometimes hung on walls. They made the house warmer. Only the rich people had glass in their windows.

In most houses there were no chimneys. The kitchen had a stone hearth, where women cooked and kept the rooms warm. The kitchen of manor houses and castles had big fireplaces where meat and even large oxen could be roasted. Sometimes these kitchens were in different buildings because people were afraid of a fire.

Health

Most poor people did not have money to buy medicine, so they got ill quickly and didn't live very long. They had to help themselves .

Only the rich people got good medical treatment . Doctors cured people with the help of plants and herbs . Others laid stones on a person's body. The man who cut your hair was often the one who operated on you if you were ill .

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The Choice Of Life: Middle Ages - Soundtrack Cracked

• afford = to have enough money to buy something
• battle = a fight between two armies—a part of a bigger war
• beef = meat of a cow
• bishop = the highest priest in the church of a country
• blacksmith = someone who makes or repairs things made out of iron
• cape = a long coat without sleeves; it hangs from your shoulders
• chimney = a pipe that comes out of the house; smoke from a fire passes through it
• cloth =material used for making clothes
• common = liked by a lot of people
• craftsman = someone who can make things with his hands
• cure = to make healthy
• damp = wet
• defend = protect
• destroy = damage so that you cannot use it
• fancy = more expensive and fashionable
• fork =a tool you use for picking up and eating food ; on one end it has 3 or 4 points
• fur = thick soft hair that covers the body of an animal
• garlic =a plant like an onion; used to give food a strong taste
• harvest = to bring in crops from the field
• heal = to make healthy
• hearth = fireplace, oven
• herbs = small plants that are used to make food taste better—people also use them to make medicine
• jewellery = small objects made out of gold or silver which you can wear around your neck or hands
• lay—laid = put
• lead—led =have
• linen = cloth made from the flax plant; you use it to make high quality clothes
• lord = a very powerful person in the Middle Ages, who owned a lot of land
• manor house =a big old house with a lot of land around it—it mostly belonged to lords
• medieval = everything that is about the Middle Ages
• merchant = a person who buys and sells things
• mutton = the meat of a lamb
• noblemen = people who were members of the highest class in the Middle Ages
• nun = a religious woman who lives with others in a convent
• onion =a round white vegetable with a brown, red or white skin; onions have a strong taste and make you cry when you cut them
• ox- oxen = a bull whose sex organs have been removed; often used for working on farms
• paved = a hard surface
• peasant = a poor farmer who rents land from a lord
• plate = a flat dish that you eat out of
• preserve = to make something last for a longer time
• promise = to say that you want to do something
• protection =when something is guarded or defended
• punish = to make someone suffer because they have done something wrong
• roast = to cook over a fire
• roof = the cover of a building
• shear = to cut wool off sheep
• silk = thread made by a silkworm
• society =people in general
• soldier = a person who fights for a country or a king
• spin =to make cotton or wool into thread by twisting it
• stocking = piece of clothing that covers a man’s or a woman’s leg
• tapestry = a large piece of heavy cloth that looks like a picture
• tax = money that the government collects from everyone
• thatched = made of dry grass or leaves
• treatment =something that is down to help or cure someone
• tunic = a long piece of clothing usually without sleeves
• velvet = expensive cloth that has a soft surface on one side
• village = a very small town
• weapon = something that you use to fight with or attack someone , like a gun
• weave = to make cloth, carpet or other things by crossing threads
• witch = a woman who is said to have magic powers and does bad things