The Medieval period in music is usually thought of from roughly 1100 A.D. to 1450 A.D. At this point in history the church was the main part of your life and more than likely a person would be living on a Noblemen’s land. Every now and a again the Noblemen you work for may hold a feast for his people, or quite possibly the Church was celebrating something. When something of that sort would happen a festival usually occurred and a festival wasn’t any good without music!

Dance music, for the most part, was either made up on the spot, passed down through generations, or was written monophonically. What this means is that there was a single line written that all the instruments would play off of. There were no chords of back up parts, just the melody. Instrumentalists of the time would make up a part after looking at the line written if they felt it necessary. Another thing to understand about monophonic music is that it was not written the  way music is today. Look at the images below.

Medieval music was written with a single dot, no way to measure the length of the note, just a pitch. The musicians of the day must have been very good to play music good enough for a king with so little to go off of.

Other than festivals, church was another place you would hear a lot of music. Most of the music in churches at this point in time was vocal, however during this time period organs were getting more popular. Most the vocal music heard while in a church were Gregorian chants, named so because many were put together by Pope Gregory. These chants  were either monophonic or diaphonic (having two parts). These chants, however, were much like folk music is today. The chants would change from performance to performance and these changes weren’t always written down. Whoever originally wrote it may not even recognize it a hundred or so years later. Check out some of these cool chants below!

During the Medieval times not only was music taking shape but many different types of instruments were beginning to appear. Many wind instruments begin to become popular. Once difficult and expensive to make, they became funded by lords who enjoyed instrumental music and there were people who became experts in making instruments. String instruments were more popular than ever and the organ became a big part of music towards the end of this musical era. Some organs of the time had thousands of pipes on them! Instruments became more popular around the time period.

Music really grew in the Medieval era. Composers started developing the musical form, writing more than one part, began to incorporate music, and towards the end of the 14th centaury composer’s names started to appear on written copies of the music and they became famous. This is a very important period in time for music. You can think of it as music’s first baby steps; developing a common idea of how to write it, making instruments to back up singers, and becoming popular throughout society. While music still had some growing up to do, this time period set up a firm base.