Secular Music

Instruments and Dancing

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 Dance Music
• It’s got a beat and you can dance to it!
• Carole – circle dance (singers & dancers)
• Sung in the vernacular
• Estampie – instrumental dance
– Open and closed cadences

KM Music Conservatory
 Raimbaut De Vaqueiras
• ca. 1180-1207
• Lived mainly in what
is now Italy
• Troubadour, later a
knight
• Joined the 4th
crusades

KM Music Conservatory
 Melodic Analysis
Melodic construction
• Pitch: what pitches does the melody use?
• Range: what are the lowest and highest notes?
• Scale/key: what system do the pitches belong to?
• Shape: what is the melodic contour?
• Perceptual coherence: does the melody have patterns you can
recognise?
Melodic movement:
• Intervals?
• Conjunct (step-wise) or disjunct (leaps) motion?
Text setting
• Syllabic (1 note per syllable) or melismatic (Several notes per
syllable)?

KM Music Conservatory
 “Kalenda Maia”,
Raimbaut de Vaqueiras

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 Early Harmony

Two notes at once!

What will they think of next?

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 Organum
• Embellishes plainchant by adding additional voices;
developed in several stages between 900 and 1300
• In early parallel organum, a 2nd melodic line moves in
parallel a 4th or 5th below the chant.

• This produces a deeper effect than monophonic

plainchant, with a bare sounding harmony.
KM Music Conservatory
 Organum
• Musica enchiriadis (c.900) – a theoretical treatise that explains
rules of creating organum
• Principal voice – original
• Organal voice – added voice
• Consonant intervals - Perfect 4, 5 and 8 (stable and
acceptable)
• Occasionally altering of the organal voice was necessary to
avoid creating tritones (Augmented 4th/Diminished 5th)
• Later, the tritone was referred to as Diabolus
in musica – ‘the Devil in music’!

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More Monty Python! Really???
Yes!

KM Music Conservatory
 Organum
• Overtime, the organal voice acquired more freedom
• It could appear above or below the principal voice
• Free organum could involve different types of melodic
motion: parallel, contrary, oblique and similar

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 Florid or Melismatic Organum
• By the late 12th-century, each note of the plainchant was held
on for longer: this voice became known as the tenor part
(tenere – to hold, Latin)
• The upper voice would sing a free-flowing (melismatic)
melody in shorter note values
• As a result some passing dissonance was unavoidable

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 Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris

• Built between
1160-1240 in the
Gothic style
• The aim was to
glorify God with
decorative
architecture, in the
same way that
singing organum
decorated the
plainchant.

KM Music Conservatory
 Notre Dame School
• During Cathedral construction, musicians at Notre
Dame were making innovations in polyphonic music
• Leonin (c.1163-90) and Perotin (c. 1200) compiled a
Magnus Liber Organi (Great Book of Organum),
• Book contains musical settings in 2, 3 & 4 voices for
the entire liturgy.
– Organum duplum
– Organum triplum
– Organum quadruplum

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 Notre Dame School
• Music also contained a form of rhythmic
notation for the first time, using groups of
notes called ligatures to indicate common
patterns of longs (long notes) and breves
(short notes): these patterns changed
depending on the context and were called
rhythmic modes
• (see Grout pp92-4 for more details)

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Perotin, “Alleluia Nativitas”

Alleluia Nativitas gloriose

virginis Marie ex semine
Abrahe orta de tribu Juda
clara ex stripe David.

O glorious nativity of the Virgin

Mary, born of the seed of Abraham
of the tribe of shining Judea,
out of the stock of David

KM Music Conservatory
 Perotin, “Alleluia Nativitas”
• Three voice texture
• Plainchant drone (A-lle-lu-ia) in lower voice
• Two organal voices above the chant

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