Chapter 4 music theory in the monastery

CHAPTER 4

MUSIC THEORY IN THE MONASTERY

A Need for Musical Notation A Need for Musical Notation ArisesArises

• Educated musicians of the Middle Ages were church men or women – monasteries/cathedrals were sole centers of learning.

• Medieval monks needed a system to capture and preserve the music they sang.

• Charlemagne wanted uniform church services in the Empire – thus clerics created a uniform musical notation that could be used throughout.

• By 900 C.E., chant repertory grows to nearly 3,000 melodies.

• Monks group chants in eight groups of modes.

• Names of modes are borrowed from the ancient Greeks– though, scale patterns were entirely different

from the Greek’s.

John of St. GallJohn of St. Gall

• Monk who writes treatise De Musica (On Music) in 1100 C.E. – sets eight church modes in a system with

numbers to which Greek names were added. [used for chant to present day.]

• Mode of a melody determined by:- range of chant- its final note

The Eight Church Modes • Derive their names (but not scale patterns) from the ancient Greek tonoi (fundamental scale note). • Arranged in pairs with an authentic and plagal (meaning “derived from”) form belonging to each pair.• Range and final note determined the mode of a chant melody.

The Development of Chant Notation

• Notation of musical pitch in the West first appears in northern Europe around 900 C.E. - Greek notation was no longer suitable.

• The earliest chant melodies were written in calligraphic signs, called neumes, moving left to right across the page. • Earliest manuscripts served only as memory aids.

– these neumes indicate whether the note was to go up or down, but did not specify exact pitches [presents problem].

Musical Staff & Pitch NamesMusical Staff & Pitch Names

• By 1000 C.E., musicians set neumes on horizontal lines placed above each other & given note names. [predecessor to modern staff].

• First there were only two lines;

– by 12th Cent. there four lines.

• Neumes also now specified exact pitches and not distance between notes.

Various Examples of Neume NotationVarious Examples of Neume Notation

a. early neume notation.

b. later neumes notation with staff.

c. “modern” chant neume notation.

d. modern musical notation [ * neumes also called nota, since it now specified a exact pitch.]

Guido of Arezzo (c991-c1033)

• Author of Micrologus (Little Essay; c1030) gives practical instructions to church musicians for singing plainsong and polyphony. [At the time, second to Boethius’ treatise, Fundamentals of Music.]

• Guido was instrumental in the development of three important innovations:

1. Musical staff with pitch letter names.

2. A musical hand that made it possible for singers to sing chant intervals instantly and accurately. [Birth of sight

singing]

3. A system of hexachords that isolated the half-step and facilitated sight-singing.

Hymn to St. John the Baptist that Guido used Hymn to St. John the Baptist that Guido used to Identify the Steps in His Hexachordto Identify the Steps in His Hexachord

The first syllables of each phrase proceed ut, re, mi, fa, sol, and la. It is from these syllables that our present system of do, re, me, fa, sol, etc., took its point of departure.

Guidonian HexachordGuidonian Hexachord

• Develops solfege – singing different pitches to various syllables (i.e.: do, re, mi, fa, sol, etc.)

• Remained standard framework for sight-singing Gregorian chant and later polyphony into 17th century.

• Later, the syllable “ti” was added and the octave is formed.

• Singers then learned to deal with two half-steps and the octave becomes the scale unit.

An ancient and a modern representation An ancient and a modern representation of the Guidonian handof the Guidonian hand

• Used as a sort of “palm

pilot” computer in the Middle

Ages.• Students used the various

joints and tips as a template

for remembering:

- intervals of the scale

days and months of

the year.

- moveable feasts of

the church year.

- the rotation of the

planets and stars.

- fundamental

mathematical

calculations.