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Middle Ages

 

            The Middle Ages began around the year A. This time period was known for feudal disputes, religious crusade, and barbaric wars, but there was also a development of music in the Middle Ages. During this time period the only place you could get a musical education was at a church or monastery. Only boys were allowed to attend the school of music and the priests were usually the musicians. In the Middle Ages most of the music was vocal. Instruments were not included in music until 1100.
             Songs known as the Gregorian chants were sung in churches. Pope Gregory I came up with new Gregorian chants, and it is said that he listens to the melodies of the chants from a dove on his shoulder. The dove represents the voice of god, Pope Gregory I had these chants written down so they would be preserved over the ages. This was around the years of 590 to 604.
             Around 1100, a new type of music came up. It was called polyphonic music; it allows priests in church to sing three or four lines of melody at a time. One of the first composers of polyphonic music was a man named Leonin. Leonin composed music called organum. Organum added a second voice to the melody of a Gregorian chant. Leonin had a successor by the name of Perotin. Perotin created music call motet, it has three to four parts and has additional voices. Motet could have been sacred (religious) or secular (nonreligious) music.
             In France there were people known as troubadours and trouveres. These were performers who performed for nobility and sang poems. Their poems included love songs, political and moral songs, war songs, and dance songs. There was another person who performed known as a jongleur. These people were viewed on the fringe of society, they went from town to town performing things like animal acts, plays, sang, danced, juggled, and show tricks. To common folk the jongleur was a traveling newspaper.
             When the Middle ages turned into the Renaissance there was a new form of music called ars nova, or "new art".


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