Secular Music 0f the

Medieval Period

 Secular

Denoting attitudes, activities,
or other things that have no
religious or spiritual basis.
 
Secular music flourished in
France and Germany during
this era.
 Characteristics of
Secular
 Music
Secular songs are written in
monophonic texture with only
one melodic line notations just
like chants.
Secular songs employ more
topics or themes than plainsong.
Native languages are applied in
creating secularof the Gregorian
chants.
Generally, secular songs are
syllabic.
Minstrels – performers of secular
songs during the Middle Ages.
A minstrel was  a medieval European
entertainer. Originally describing any
type of entertainer such as a musician,
juggler, acrobat, singer or fool
The term later, from the sixteenth
century, came to mean a specialist
entertainer who sang songs and
played musical instruments.
 
Jongleurs – France
Gaukler – Germany
Gleemen - England
 Secular Songs in France

Troubadours and Trouveres –
poet-musicians
Educated and cultured men
from the nobility class residing in
the feudal courts
Planh – a lament on the death of a
distinguished person.
Chanson de toile – a spinning song

Pastroulle – a song in dialogue form
between a knight and shepherdness.
Chanson de geste – a narrative
poetry with extraordinary characters
Canso – a poem of love
Tenso – a poem in form of dialogue
Sirventes and Enueg – poems that
use sarcasm in exposing follies
 
Aube – the song of a friend
watching over lovers
 Adam De la Halle

Adam the Hunchback
Family name
Born in France in 1237
Adam of Arras – suggest that he
came from Arras France
Cisterian abbey of Vaucelles –
studied theology, grammar and
music
He would have been a priest,

but in the end he married Marie
Robert II, Count of Artois and
then with Charles of Anjou,
King of Naples.
Jeu de Robin et Marion
Le Jeu de la Feuillee

 
 Adam Puchmann, Konrad Nachtigall and Hans
Sachs
 Latin Secular Songs

 Conductus – wandering students of the Medival
period
 Drinking, love, political, satire and vulgar topics.
 The Song of the Sibyl.

 
 They are of low social order along with prostitutes
and slaves, who have no civil rights.
 Usually sing songs composed by others.
 They entertain feudal courts with their acrobatic
shows, jugglery, and trained animals.
 Troubadours

 Troubadour is an itinerant composer and performer
of songs in medieval Europe; a jongleur or travelling
minstrel.
 Trouveres

 Trouvere is a medieval lyric poet using the northern
(precursor dialects of modern French)
 Troubadours

 Marcabru of Gascony
 Guiraut Riquier
 Guiraut de Bornelh
 Bernart de Ventadorn
 Bertran de Born
 Trouveres

 Conon de Bethune
 King Thibaut IV of Navarre
 Blondel de Nesle
 Adam de la Halle
 Secular Songs in
Germany

 Minnesingers – Singers of love songs
 Minnelied – literature of German poetry and song
 Wislav von Rugen, Heinrich von Meissen,
Walthervon der Vogelweide, Heinrich von
Morungen, And Neidhart von Reuental
 Meistersingers – Successors to the Minnesingers
 Meistergesang