Concise History Of Western Music 1-4

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liturgy

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The prescribed body of texts to be spoken or sung and ritual actions to be performed in a religious service.

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Hymn

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A song to or in honor of a god. In the Christian tradition, a song of praise sung to God.

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Monophonic

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Consisting of a single unaccompanied melodic line.

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Heterophony

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Music or a musical texture in which a melody is performed by two or more parts simultaneously in more than one way, for example, one voice performing simply, and the other with embellishments.

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Harmonia

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(pl. harmoniai) An ancient Greek term with multiple meanings: (1) the union of parts in an orderly whole; (2) an interval; (3) a scale type; (4) a style of melody.

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Ethos

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(Greek, "custom") (1) Moral and ethical character or way of being or behaving. (2) The character, mood, or emotional effect of a certain tonos, mode, meter, or melody.

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Tetrachord

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(from Greek, "four strings") In Greek and medieval theory, a scale of four notes spanning a perfect fourth.

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Diatonic

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In ancient Greek music, an adjective describing a tetrachord with two whole tones and one semitone.

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Enharmonic

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In ancient Greek music, an adjective describing a tetrachord comprising a major third and two quartertones, or a melody that uses such tetrachords.

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Chromatic

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(from Greek chroma, "color") In ancient Greek music, an adjective describing a tetrachord comprising a minor third and two semitones, or a melody that uses such tetrachords.

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Mass

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(from Latin missa, "dismissed") (1) The most important service in the Roman church. (2) A musical work setting the texts of the Ordinary of the Mass, typically Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei. The church service is capitalized (the Mass), but a musical setting of the Mass Ordinary is not (a mass).

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Ordinary

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(from Latin ordinarium, "usual") Texts of the Mass that remain the same on most or all days of the church calendar, although the tunes may change.

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Proper

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(from Latin proprium, "particular" or "appropriate") Texts of the Mass that are assigned to a particular day in the church calendar.

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Neume

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A sign used in notation of chant to indicate a certain number of notes and a general melodic direction (in early forms of notation) or particular pitches (in later forms).

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Responsorial

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A manner of performing chant in which a soloist alternates with a group.

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Antiphonal

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A manner of performance in which two or more groups alternate.

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Syllabic

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Having (or tending to have) one note sung to each syllable of text.

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Psalm tone

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A melodic formula for singing psalms in the Office. There is one psalm tone for each mode.

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Intonation

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The first notes of a chant, sung by a soloist to establish the pitch for the choir, which joins the soloist to continue the chant.

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Tenor

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(from Latin tenere, "to hold") In a mode or chant, the reciting tone

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Mediant

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In a psalm tone, the cadence that marks the middle of the psalm verse.

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Termination

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In a psalm tone, the cadence that marks the end of the psalm verse.

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Doxology

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A formula of praise to the Trinity. Two forms of the Doxology are used in Gregorian chant: the Greater Doxology, or Gloria, and the Lesser Doxology, used with psalms, Introits, and other chants.

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Canticle

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A hymn-like or psalm-like passage from a part of the Bible other than the Book of Psalms.

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Antiphon

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(1) A liturgical chant that precedes and follows a psalm or canticle in the Office. (2) In the Mass, a chant originally associated with antiphonal psalmody; specifically, the Communion and the first and final portion of the Introit.

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Responsory

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Responsorial chant used in the Office. Matins includes nine Great Responsories, and several other Office services include a Short Responsory.

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Hymn

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A song to or in honor of a god. In the Christian tradition, a song of praise sung to God.

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Psalmody

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The singing of psalms.

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Introit

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(from Latin introitus, "entrance") The first item in the Mass Proper, originally sung for the entrance procession, comprising an antiphon, a psalm verse, the Lesser Doxology, and a reprise of the antiphon.

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Kyrie

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(Greek, "Lord") One of the five major musical items in the Mass Ordinary; the Kyrie is based on a Byzantine litany.

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Gloria

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(Latin, 'Glory') The second of the five major musical items in the Mass Ordinary; the Gloria is a praise formula also known as the Greater Doxology.

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Alleluia

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An item from the Mass Proper that is sung just before the Gospel reading. The Alleluia consists of a respond to the text 'Alleluia,' a verse, and a repetition of the respond. Chant Alleluias are normally melismatic in style and sung in a responsorial manner, with one or more soloists alternating with the choir.

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Gradual

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(from Latin gradus, "stairstep") An item in the Mass Proper that is sung after the Epistle reading The gradual consists of a respond and a verse. Chant graduals are normally melismatic in style and sung in a responsorial manner, with one or more soloists alternating with the choir.

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Sanctus

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(Latin, "Holy") One of the five major musical items in the Mass Ordinary; the Sanctus is based in part on Isaiah 6:3.

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Communion

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An item in the Mass Proper, originally sung during Communion, comprising an antiphon without verses.

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Agnus Dei

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(Latin, "Lamb of God") The fifth of the five major musical items in the Mass Ordinary; the Agnus Dei is based on a litany.

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Jubilus

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(Latin) In chant, an effusive melisma, particularly the melisma on "-ia" in an Alleluia.

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Trope

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An addition to an existing chant, consisting of (1) words and melody; (2) a melisma; or (3) words only, set to an existing melisma or other melody.

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Sequence

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(from Latin sequentia, "something that follows") A category of Latin chant that follows the Alleluia in some masses.

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Liturgical drama

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A dialogue on a sacred subject, set to music, usually performed with action, and linked to the liturgy.

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Ars Nova

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(Latin, "new art") A style of polyphony from fourteenth-century France distinguished from earlier styles by a new system of rhythmic notation that allowed duple or triple division of note values, syncopation, and great rhythmic flexibility.

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Minim

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In the Ars Nova and Renaissance systems of rhythmic notation, a note that is equal to half or a third of a semibreve.

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Isorhythm

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(from Greek iso-, "equal," and rhythm) Repetition of an extended pattern of durations in a voice part (usually the tenor) throughout a section or an entire composition.

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Talea

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(Latin, "cutting"; pronounced TAH-lay-ah) In an isorhythmic composition, an extended rhythmic pattern repeated one or more times, usually in the tenor. Compare to color.

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Color

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(Latin, rhetorical term for ornament, particularly repetition; pronounced KOH-lor) In an isorhythmic composition, a repeated melodic pattern, as opposed to a repeated rhythmic pattern (a talea).

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Hocket

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(French hoquet, "hiccup") In thirteenth- and fourteenth-century polyphony, rapid alternation between two voices, each resting while the other sings, as if a single melody were split between them; or a composition based on this device.

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Contratenor

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(Latin, "against the tenor") In fourteenth- and fifteenth-century polyphony, the voice composed after or in conjunction with the tenor in about the same range, helping to form a harmonic foundation.

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Formes fixes

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(French, "fixed forms"; pronounced form FEEX) Schemes of poetic and musical repetition, each featuring a refrain, used in late-medieval and fifteenth-century French chansons; in particular, the ballade, rondeau, and virelai.

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Virelai

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A French forme fixe in the pattern A bba A bba A bba A, in which a refrain (A) alternates with stanzas with the musical form bba, a using the same music as the refrain.

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Ballade

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A French forme fixe, normally in three stanzas, in which each stanza has the musical form aab and ends with a refrain.

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Rondeau

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(pl. rondeaux) A French forme fixe with a single stanza and the musical form ABaAabAB, with capital letters indicating lines of the refrain and lowercase letters indicating new text set to music from the refrain.

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Chanson

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(French, "song"; pronounced shanh-SONH) A secular song with French words; used especially for polyphonic songs of the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries.

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Ars Subtilior

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(Latin, "more subtle art") Style of polyphony from the late-fourteenth and very early-fifteenth centuries in southern France and northern Italy distinguished by extreme complexity in rhythm and notation.

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Trecento

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(Italian, short for mille trecento, "one thousand three hundred"; pronounced treh-CHEN-toh) The 1300s (the fourteenth century), particularly used with reference to Italian art, literature, and music of the time.

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Madrigal

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(Italian madrigale, "song in the mother tongue") A fourteenth-century Italian poetic form and its musical setting, having two or three stanzas followed by a ritornello.

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Caccia

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(Italian, "hunt"; pronounced CAH-cha; pl. cacce) A fourteenth-century Italian form featuring two voices in canon over a free, untexted tenor.

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Ritornello

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(Italian, "refrain") In a fourteenth-century madrigal, the closing section, in a different meter from the preceding verses.

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Haut

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(French, "high"; pronounced OH) In the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries, term for loud instruments such as cornetts and sackbuts.

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Bas

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(French, "low"; pronounced BAH) In the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries, term for soft instruments such as vielles and harps.

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Pythagoras

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is credited with discovering that the basic consonant intervals were produced by simple ratios: 2:1 for the octave, 3:2 for the fifth, and 4:3 for the fourth.

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Martianus Capella

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helped to codify the seven liberal arts: the three verbal arts called the trivium (grammar, dialectic or logic, and rhetoric) and the four mathematical disciplines called the quadrivium (geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and harmonics or music).

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Boethius

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De institutione musica (The Fundamentals of Music) by Boethius (ca. 480–524) is the main source through which Greek music theory was transmitted to the Middle Ages.

Boethius listed three kinds of music: musica mundana (cosmic music), the orderly numerical relations that control the natural world; musica humana (human music), which controls the human body and soul; and musica instrumentalis, audible music produced by voices or instruments. He saw music primarily as a science.

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Hildegard of Bingen
(1098–1179)

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wrote both words and music for the sacred music drama Ordo virtutum (The Virtues, ca. 1151). Her life in a convent allowed her creative outlets and positions of leadership not afforded to women outside its walls.

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Guido of Arezzo (ca. 991–after 1033)

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devised solmization syllables to help singers recall where whole tones and semitones occur.

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Guidonian hand

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assigned a note to each joint of the left hand as a tool to teach notes and intervals.

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Goliard songs

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Early forms of secular music (from the eleventh and twelfth centuries) include goliard songs, songs with Latin texts celebrating the vagabond lives of students and wandering clerics called goliards.

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Musica ficta

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(Latin, "feigned music") In polyphony of the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries, the practice of raising or lowering by a semitone the pitch of a written note, particularly at a cadence, for the sake of smoother harmony or motion of the parts.

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Double-leading-tone cadence

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A cadence popular in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in which the bottom voice moves down a whole tone and the upper voices move up a semitone, forming a major third and a major sixth expanding to an open fifth and an octave.

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Polyphony

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Music or musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody.

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Organum

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(Latin; pronounced OR-guh-num; pl. organa) (1) One of several styles of early polyphony in use from the ninth through the thirteenth centuries, involving the addition of one or more voices to an existing chant. (2) A piece, whether improvised or written, in one of those styles in which one voice is drawn from a chant.

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Organal voice

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(Latin, vox organalis) In an organum, the voice that is added above or below the original chant melody.

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Principal voice

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(Latin, vox principalis) In an organum, the original chant melody.

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Parallel organum

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Type of polyphony in which an added voice moves in exact parallel to a chant, normally a perfect fifth below it. Either voice may be doubled at the octave.

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Free organum

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Style of organum in which the organal voice moves in a free mixture of contrary, oblique, parallel, and similar motion against the chant (usually above it).

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Aquitanian polyphony

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Style of polyphony from the twelfth century encompassing both discant and florid organum.

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Versus

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(Latin, "verse") A type of Latin sacred song, either monophonic or polyphonic, setting a rhymed, rhythmic poem.

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Florid organum

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A twelfth-century style of two-voice polyphony in which the lower voice sustains relatively long notes while the upper voice sings notegroups of varying length above each note of the lower voice.

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Discant

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(Latin, "singing apart") (1) A twelfth-century style of polyphony in which the upper voice or voices have about one to three notes for each note of the lower voice. (2) A treble part.

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Notre Dame polyphony

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A style of polyphony from the late-twelfth and thirteenth centuries, associated with the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.

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Rhythmic modes

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System of six durational patterns (for example, mode 1, long-short) used in polyphony of the late-twelfth and thirteenth centuries and as the basis of the rhythmic notation of the Notre Dame composers.

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Clausula

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(Latin, "clause"; pl. clausulae) In Notre Dame polyphony, a self-contained section, closing with a cadence, of an organum.

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Triplum

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(from Latin triplus, "triple") (1) In polyphony of the late-twelfth through fourteenth centuries, the third voice from the bottom in a three- or four-voice texture, added to a tenor and duplum. (2) In Notre Dame polyphony, an organum in three voices.

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Quadruplum

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(Latin, "quadruple") (1) In polyphony of the late-twelfth through fourteenth centuries, the fourth voice from the bottom in a four-voice texture, added to a tenor, duplum, and triplum. (2) In Notre Dame polyphony, an organum in four voices.

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Conductus

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A serious medieval song, monophonic or polyphonic, setting a rhymed, rhythmic Latin poem.

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Motet

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(from French mot, "word") A polyphonic vocal composition; the specific meaning changes over time. The earliest motets add a text to an existing discant clausula. Thirteenth-century motets feature one or more voices, each with its own sacred or secular text in Latin or French, above a tenor drawn from a chant or other melody.

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Cantus firmus

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(Latin, "fixed melody") An existing melody, often taken from a Gregorian chant, on which a new polyphonic work is based; used especially for melodies presented in long notes.

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Franconian notation

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System of notation, described by Franco of Cologne around 1280, using noteshapes to indicate durations.

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Voice exchange

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In polyphony, a technique in which voices trade segments of music, so that the same combination of lines is heard twice or more, but with different voices singing each line.

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Jongleurs, or minstrels

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Jongleurs, or minstrels, made a living as traveling musicians and performers, on the margins of society. In the eleventh century, they organized brotherhoods, which later became guilds.

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Troubadours (feminine: trobairitz)

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Troubadours (feminine: trobairitz) were poet-composers active in southern France in the twelfth century who spoke Provençal (or langue d’oc or Occitan).

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trouvères

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Troubadours (feminine: trobairitz) were poet-composers active in southern France in the twelfth century who spoke Provençal (or langue d’oc or Occitan). Their counterparts in northern France, called trouvères, spoke langue d’o•l, the ancestor of modern French, and remained active through the thirteenth century. Troubadours and trouvères flourished in castles and courts but came from a variety of social classes.

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refrain

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a segment of text that returns in each stanza with the same melody.

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fine amour

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Many Old Occitan lyrics have the topic of fine amour, a love in which a discreet, unattainable woman was adored from a distance.

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Bernart de Ventadorn

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Bernart de Ventadorn (ca. 1150–ca. 1180), one of the most popular poets of his day, rose from a low status to consort with aristocrats. His song Can vei la lauzeta mover typifies fine amour. Music: NAWM 8

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Troubadour and trouvère poems are

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Troubadour and trouvère poems are strophic, and melodies are mostly syllabic with a range of an octave or less. Because of their notation, the rhythm of troubadour melodies is uncertain. Each line of a canso (love song) receives its own melodic phrase, and some phrases use repetition to create formal patterns.

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Comtessa Beatriz de Día (d. ca. 1212)

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was a countess and a trobairitz, and her song A chantar shows a woman’s perspective of courtly love.

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Minnesinger

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knightly poet-composers in German lands of the twelfth through the fourteenth centuries. They often sang of idealized love (Minne) and utilized bar form: AAB. (A is called the Stollen, and B is called the Abgesang.) Minnesinger also wrote Crusade songs. Music: NAWM 11

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Eleanor of Aquitaine

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Eleanor of Aquitaine (ca. 1122–1204) was a member of an aristocratic family, granddaughter of a troubadour, wife and mother of kings, and a patron of troubadours and trouvères.

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Cantigas

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Cantigas were Spanish monophonic songs with refrains. The most famous collection, Cantigas de Santa María, includes over four hundred cantigas in honor of the Virgin Mary. Music: NAWM 12

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strophic

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is the term applied to songs in which all verses or stanzas of the text are sung to the same music

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Psalm tones

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Psalm tones are formulas for chanting psalms. A psalm tone consists of an intonation, a recitation on the reciting tone or tenor, a median to mark the middle of the psalm verse, a continuation of the reciting tone, and a termination.

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Doxology

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The Lesser Doxology, an expression of praise to the Trinity, is sung at the end of each psalm. Music: NAWM 4a

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Antiphonal psalmody

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one choir sings the first half of each psalm verse, and another choir sings the second half.

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Antiphons

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Each psalm is paired with an antiphon, which is sung before and after the psalm. Office responsories begin with a choral respond, proceed with a soloist singing the psalm verse, and close with the respond.

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Introit and Communion

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In the Mass, the Introit and Communion are antiphonal chants.

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Gradual and Alleluia

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The Gradual and Alleluia are responsorial chants, and are highly melismatic, with a single verse introduced or framed by a respond. Many Alleluias include matching phrases at the ends of sections. Music: NAWM 3d and 3e

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Responsorial performance

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A soloist and choir alternate in responsorial performance.

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melisma

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A passage of several notes sung to one syllable of text, as in Gregorian chant