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, meaning it was written for the church, generally to the text of the bible. This meant that those who wrote it had to be literate. In addition, it was around the year 600 AD when 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, and it was at that point notes got their letter names of A, B, C, etc. It was also from Pope Gregory that we got the name Gregorian Chant which was used to describe the music sung at this time.

Pope Gregory’s Gregorian Chant was originally sung in unison, meaning it was monophonic, with Latin words. 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 plainchant. This second voice became more and more melodic, eventually evolving into polyphonic music.

Due to the constant evolution of the Christian Church and culture during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the church found it more difficult to offer support to everyone. So, rather than addressing the diversity of problems faced by the High Middle Ages utilizing spiritual means, the church decided to attract people through the utilization of music as entertainment rather than just as a means to praise God.

Notre Dame organum was the tool utilized to attract these lost souls. The music was much more artistic than spiritual. In essence, the organum assured the church that people would not turn to other sources for their intellectual and artistic needs. This practice is still widely used in the churches of today.

Listen to the following example of polyphonic organum: