Medieval Era: Influential Events, Institutions, and People

The Roman Empire collapsed in the fifth century AD, which was the beginning of the Dark Ages in Western Europe. There was constant warfare, no Roman Emperor, and cities were destroyed. The following nine centuries were developed through the spread of the newly emerging Christian Church. The church established new concepts of administering justice and began the Holy Crusades against the East. Universities sprung up and the religious focus of the era directed the development of music, art, and literature.

Almost all music of this time was sacred music.  Sacred music has religious themes or text, and is meant to be played in church.  Sacred music can be vocal or instrumental.  The text of sacred music often comes from the bible. Composers of sacred music during the Medieval era were often members of the more literate class, or members of religious orders who knew how to read.

 
Around the year 600 AD, the first form of music notation was created. Pope Gregory I (The Great) created a system to explain the musical scales that the churches had been using.  Now, composers had a system to label the notes they played, using the first seven letters of the alphabet:  A, B, C, D, E, F G.  It was also from Pope Gregory that we got the name Gregorian Chant, used to describe the music sung at this time.   An eleventh century monk named Guido of Arezzo invented a system of syllables used to indicate pitches (do, re, mi, etc.) and developed a basic version of the musical staff we use today.

As music notation grew more complex, vocal and instrumental music became more complicated and diverse.   Initially, Gregorian Chant consisted of a single line of music   sung in unison, with Latin text.  A song with one melody is called monophonic . Over time the church (specifically the cathedral of Notre Dame in France) began using another musical form called organum. Organum utilized a second voice that would decorate the original melody. This second voice became more and more melodic, eventually evolving into polyphonic music.

Listen to the following example of polyphonic organum: