Concise History of Western Music
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Chapter Index Chapter 1: Music in Ancient Greece and Early Christian Rome Chapter 2: Chant and Secular Song in the Middle Ages, 400Ð1450 Chapter 3: Polyphonic Music from Its Beginnings through the Thirteenth Century Chapter 4: French and Italian Music in the Fourteenth Century Chapter 5: England and Burgundian Lands in the Fifteenth Century: The Beginnings of an International Style Chapter 6: The Age of the Renaissance: Music of the Low Countries Chapter 7: The Age of the Renaissance: New Currents in the Sixteenth Century Chapter 8: Church Music of the Late Renaissance and Reformation Chapter 9: Church Music of the Late Renaissance and Reformation Chapter 10: Opera and Vocal Music in the Late Seventeenth Century Chapter 11: Instrumental Music in the Late Baroque Chapter 12: Music in the Early Eighteenth Century Chapter 13: The Early Classic Period: Opera and Instrumental Music in the Eighteenth Century Chapter 14: The Late Eighteenth Century: Haydn and Mozart Chapter 15: Ludwig van Beethoven Chapter 16: Romanticism and Nineteenth-Century Orchestral Music Chapter 17: Solo, Chamber, and Vocal Music in the Nineteenth Century Chapter 18: Opera, Music Drama, and Church Music in the Nineteenth Century Chapter 19: European Music from the 1870s to World War I Chapter 20: The European Mainstream in the Twentieth Century Chapter 21: Atonality, Serialism, and Recent Developments in Twentieth-Century Europe Chapter 22: The American Twentieth Century
 

Outlines:
  - Roman Chant and Liturgy
  - Nonliturgical and Secular Monody
  Quiz
  Listening Guide
Chapter 2: Chant and Secular Song in the Middle Ages, 400–1450
Nonliturgical and Secular Monody
  1. Early Secular Genres

    1. Goliard songs (named for the fictitious Bishop of Goliath)
      1. Eleventh–twelfth centuries
      2. Sung by students who wandered from school to school before the founding of universities
      3. Texts in Latin, about wine, women, satire
      4. Only found in a few manuscripts, without precise pitch notation

    2. Conductus
      1. Eleventh–thirteenth centuries
      2. These pieces may have been used to "conduct" clerics from place to place in liturgical dramas or in church.
      3. Texts are serious, nonliturgical, with metrical verses in Latin.
      4. Subjects sacred or secular
      5. Melody is newly composed, not borrowed from chant.

    3. Chanson de Geste: song of deeds
      1. Epic narratives about deeds of national heroes
      2. Transmitted orally and are sung to formulas.
      3. The music has not been preserved.
      4. Texts were not written down until relatively late.
      5. Most famous chanson de geste is the Song of Roland, the national epic of France.

  2. Secular Musicians of the Middle Ages

    1. Jongleurs (also ménestrels or minstrels)
      1. Professional musicians originating in the tenth century
      2. Wandered from village to village or castle to castle
      3. Both vocalists and instrumentalists
      4. Organized themselves into guilds offering professional training
      5. Sang and played music composed by others

    2. Troubadours and trouvères: inventors of song
      1. Troubadours (male) and trobairitz (female) flourished in southern France, speaking langue d'oc (Occitan), also called Provençal. About 2,600 of their poems and fewer than three hundred melodies have been preserved.
      2. Trouvères flourished in northern France, speaking langue d'oïl, the language that became modern French. About 2,130 of their poems and two-thirds of their melodies have been preserved.
      3. Both troubadours and trouvères flourished in aristocratic circles, and some were aristocratic themselves. (See window, Eleanor of Aquitaine)
      4. Dance songs, often with a refrain for a chorus of dancers
      5. Love songs, especially by the troubadours, directed toward an unattainable woman

    3. Musical plays
      1. NAWM 8, Robins m'aime
        1. From Jeu de Robin et Marion (ca. 1284), a pastoral play
        2. Rondeau form, using refrains ABabAB
      2. NAWM 9, Can vei la lauzeta mover
        1. By Bernart de Ventadorn, a troubadour
        2. Text is in Provençal (Occitan).
        3. Subject is a man's love for an unattainable woman, typical of troubadour love songs.
        4. Strophic, with all stanzas sung to the same melody
        5. Rhythm is unknown because manuscripts do not notate any rhythm.
      3. NAWM 10, A Chantar
        1. Canso (strophic song) by Beatriz de Dia (d. ca. 1212)
        2. Topic is unrequited love.
        3. The form is ababcdb.

    4. Secular song in Germany, inspired by troubadours
      1. Minnesinger flourished in the twelfth through fourteenth centuries, and sang of love (minne) in strophic songs with melodic repetitions.
      2. Meistersinger flourished in the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries. The most famous of these was Hans Sachs, who composed Nachdem David war (NAWM 11) in bar form: aab.

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