Music History: From the Middle Ages to the 21st Century

• Music


  An art which occupies time, distinct from other arts like sculpture which occupies space
• The march of time has a direct bearing on the styles of music that have existed and accumulated over time
• Style


  A characteristic way of using melody, rhythm, tone color, dynamics, harmony, texture, and form
• Musical styles change continuously from one historical era to the next
• Music in the Middle Ages (450 – 1450 Common Era)


  • A thousand years of European history spanned, a time of migration, upheavals, and wars
  • Romanesque churches and monasteries (1100 – 1150 C.E.) and gothic cathedrals (1150 – 1450 C.E.) were constructed
  • Towns grew and universities were founded
  • A sharp division existed among the three main social classes: nobility, peasantry, and clergy
• Gregorian chant


  • The official music of the Roman Catholic Church for over 1,000 years, consisting of a melody set to sacred Latin texts and sung without accompaniment (a cappella), and is monophonic in texture
  • It was meant to create the atmosphere for specific prayers and rituals in the church service and has a calm, otherworldly quality that represents the voice of the church rather than any individual
  • Its rhythm is flexible (not good for disco nor hip-hop) and are without time signature, resulting in a floating and free character (good for meditation)
  • Named after Pope Gregory I (the Great, reigned 590- 604 C.E.)
• The next stage of innovation was the addition of voices above or below the old, pre-existing Gregorian chants, resulting in a type of harmonized music called organum or organa
• Music in the Renaissance (1450 – 1600 C.E.)


  • The age of "rebirth" of creativity, a period of exploration and adventure
  • The dominant intellectual movement was humanism, which focused on human life and accomplishments and was captivated by the pagan cultures of ancient Greece and Rome
• Word/text painting


  A musical representation of specific poetic images, e.g. descending melody for descending from heaven, rapid notes for running
• The two most important choral genres, the secular madrigal and the sacred motet, employ word painting
• Texture of Renaissance music


  Basically polyphonic, with a choral composition having four, five, or six voice parts of nearly equal melodic interest, resulting in the "golden age" of a cappella (unaccompanied) choral music
• Rhythm and Melody in Renaissance music


  • Rhythm is more a gentle flow than a sharply defined beat, with each melodic line/voice part having a lot of rhythmic independence
  • Pitch patterns in Renaissance melodies are easy to sing and the melodies move by steps (conjunct motion) with very few leaps (disjunct motion)
• Other composers of the Renaissance period

  • Palestrina
  • Orlando di Lasso
  • Giovanni Gabrieli
  • dela Victoria
  • Morley
  • Gibbons
  • Byrd
  • Monteverdi (the last great composer of the Renaissance and the first great composer of the Baroque)
• Music of the Baroque Period (1600 – 1750)


  • Artists filled spaces with action and movement and exploited their materials to expand the potential of color, detail, ornament, and depth
  • Seventeenth century scientific discoveries led to new inventions and the gradual improvement of medicine, mining, navigation, and industry
  • Most music was written to order, commissioned by aristocratic courts, churches, opera houses, and municipalities, and for the first time instrumental music became as important as vocal music
• Unity of mood in Baroque music


  A Baroque piece usually expresses one basic mood - what begins joyfully will remain joyful throughout, with specific rhythms or melodic patterns associated with specific moods
• Rhythm in Baroque music


  Rhythmic patterns heard at the beginning of the piece are repeated throughout, providing a compelling drive and energy with rarely any interruption
• Melody in Baroque music


  An opening melody will be heard again and again in the course of a piece, with a sense of directed motion frequently the result of melodic sequence - successive repetition of the melodic pattern at higher or lower pitch levels
• Texture in Baroque music


  Late Baroque music is predominantly polyphonic in texture, with two or more melodic lines competing for the listener's attention, though not all Baroque music was polyphonic
• Words and Music in Baroque music


  • Composers used music to depict the meaning of specific words, with techniques like associating high tones with "heaven" and low tones with "hell", rising scales for upward motion and descending scales for downward motion, and descending chromatic scales for pain and grief
  • Composers also emphasized words by writing many rapid notes for a single syllable of text (called melisma) to display a singer's virtuosity
• Music in the Classical Period (1750 – 1820)


  • The power of reason was highly valued, undermining the authority of the social and religious establishment, and preparing the way for the American and French revolutions
• Contrast of Mood in Classical music


  A Classical composition will fluctuate in mood, with dramatic, turbulent music leading into a carefree dance tune, expressing conflicting surges of happiness and depression under the firm control of masters like Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven
• Rhythm in Classical music


  Flexibility of rhythm adds variety, with unexpected pauses, syncopations, and frequent changes from long duration notes to shorter ones
• Texture in Classical music


  Basically homophonic, but treated flexibly with the music shifting smoothly or suddenly from one texture to another
• Melody in Classical music


  Among the most tuneful and easy to remember, often with a folk or popular flavor and a balanced, symmetrical structure of two phrases of the same length
• Dynamics in Classical music


  Widespread use of gradual dynamic change - crescendo and decrescendo, which were an electrifying novelty when first introduced
• Music in the Romantic Period (1820 – 1900)


  • The flowering of Romanticism, a cultural movement that stressed emotion, imagination, and individualism
  • Emotional subjectivity was a basic quality, with the Romantics exploring their inner lives and the realm of fantasy, the unconscious, the irrational, and the world of dreams
  • The Romantic preoccupation with fantasy was paired with interest in exoticism and the past
• Significant Romantic musicians


  • Franz Schubert
  • Robert Schumann
  • Clara Wieck Schumann
  • Frederic Chopin
  • Franz Liszt
  • Felix Mendelssohn
  • Hector Berlioz
  • Bedrich Smetana
  • Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
  • Johannes Brahms
  • Giuseppe Verdi
  • Giacomo Puccini
  • Richard Wagner
• Romantic musicians


  Often composed to fulfill an inner need rather than to fulfill a commission or meet the demands of an aristocratic or church patron, for a middle-class audience
• Characteristics of Romantic Music

  • Continued to use the musical forms of the preceding Classical era, but with greater ranges of tone color, dynamics, and pitch, and a broader harmonic vocabulary with emphasis on colorful, unstable chords
  • Put much emphasis on self-expression and individuality of style, with composers creating music that sounds unique and reflects their personalities
  • Explored a myriad of feelings including flamboyance and intimacy, unpredictability and melancholy, rapture and longing, with fascination for the fantastic and diabolical, and all aspects of nature
  • Expressed musical nationalism by deliberately creating music with a specific national identity, using the folk songs, dances, legends, and history of their homelands, as well as musical exoticism drawing on colorful materials from foreign lands
  • Program music is instrumental music associated with a story, poem, idea, or scene, representing the emotions, characters, and events of a particular story, or evoking the sounds and motions of nature
• Romantic composers


  Deliberately created music with a specific national identity, using the folk songs, dances, legends, and history of their homelands
• Musical exoticism


  Fascination with national identity also led composers to draw on colorful materials from foreign lands
• Musical exoticism


  • Composers wrote melodies in an Asian style
  • Used rhythms and instruments associated with distant lands
  • Bizet wrote Carmen, an opera set in Spain
  • Puccini evoked Japan in Madame Butterfly
  • Rimsky -Korsakov suggested an Arabian atmosphere in Scheherazade
• Program music


  Instrumental music associated with a story, poem, idea, or scene
• Program music


  • Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet
  • Smetana's The Moldau
• Program music


  • Usually the non-musical element is specified by a title or by explanatory comments called a program
  • Can represent the emotions, characters, and events of a particular story
  • Can evoke the sounds and motions of nature
• Colorful harmony


  • Romantic composers emphasized rich, colorful, and complex harmonies
  • Dissonant, or unstable, chords were also used more freely
  • Deliberately delaying the resolution of dissonance to a consonant, or stable, chord created feelings of yearning, tension, and mystery
• Forms in Romantic music


  • Musical miniatures
  • Large and long compositions
• Musical miniatures


  • Piano pieces by Chopin and songs by Schubert that last but a few minutes
  • Meant to be heard in the intimate surroundings of a home
  • Met the needs of the growing number of people who owned pianos
• Large and long compositions


  • Gigantic works by Berlioz and Wagner
  • Call for a huge number of performers and last for several hours
• The years 1900 to 1913 brought radical new developments in science and art that overturned long-held beliefs