The Average Life in the Middle Ages

Music in the Christian Church

Let’s Get Medieval

 The Mass
• Current familiar portions (Ordinary)
– Kyrie
– Gloria
– Credo
– Sanctus
– Agnus Dei
For 1000 years the Catholic Mass has existed. Composers who
wrote Mass Ordinary: Palestrina, Byrd, Haydn, Mozart, and
Beethoven.
KM Music Conservatory
The Office
 Liturgy
• “The role of music was to carry the [message],
accompany those rituals, and inspire the
faithful.” (Grout, Palisca, Burkholder 48)
• All done within the church calendar
How a Medieval Monk Spent His Day
 Composers of Chant
• Not until after the turn of the 12th C. did
composers write their names on their works.
• Why? Divine inspiration
 Gregorian chant
• Arched Melodies
• Melodies follow the structure of the text
• A range of performance styles and liturgical functions.
• Syllabic style involves one note per syllable
• Melismatic style involves several notes per syllable

KM Music Conservatory
KM Music Conservatory
 Hildegard von Bingen
• 1098-1179
• Founded convent 1150 at Rupertsburg, near
Bingen (now Germany).
• Prolific author (books, poems, & prose)
• Wrote and composed Ordo virtutum (The
Virtues) – Morality Play
– ca. 1151
– earliest surviving non-liturgical music drama
 Alleluia! O virga mediatrix
• A Proper for the Mass of Feasts in honor of
the Blessed Virgin Mary
• Mediatrix – mediator between mankind and
God
• Closed garden = virginity
 Alleluia! O virga mediatrix
Alleluia! Alleluia!
O virga mediatrix, O branch and mediatrix,
sancta viscera tua your sacred flesh
mortem superaverunt has conquered death,
et venter tuus omnes your womb all creatures
creaturas illumined
illuminavit in beauty’s bloom from
in pulchro flore de that exquisite purity
suavissima integritate of your enclosèd modesty
clausi pudoris tui sprung forth.
orto.
 Alleluia! O virga mediatrix
• Alleluia – melisma
• Phrygian mode
• Highest pitch – Mary’s modesty
• Score
 Chant Today
• It’s still a thing
• Second Vatican Council (1962-65)
• Best-Selling Albums
– Chant (Benedictine monks of Santo Domingo de
Silos Spain) 1993.
– Chant: Music for Paradise (Heiligenkreuz Abbey,
Austria) 2008.