Muscial Instruments and the Middle Ages
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Very little is known of how musical instruments were employed in the Middle Ages. Although medieval art and literature offer considerable evidence of the existence of a variety of instruments, medieval theorists and transcribers of music indicated almost nothing about their use. It is known that, with the relatively minor exceptions of the organ and tuned bells, instruments were not used in sacred music. Their broad use in secular music, however, is little understood. In studying an era when little was done to preserve secular music, and existing scores made no mention of instrumental roles, musicologists must make deductions about instrumentation based on non-musical evidence and the interpretation of the rare extant scores, whose notations are imperfectly understood. A review of the use of instruments in medieval music demonstrates the extent of what is known and the methods by which scholars continue to investigate the question. The Middle Ages (800-1450) serves as a convenient term to describe Europe in the centuries between the end of the large-scale barbarian invasion of the Roman Empire (and the end of the empire in the West) and the widespread renewal of interest in the antique that marked the beginning of the Renaissance. Most importantly, the medieval era was one in which most of Europe was united in a single faith, under the spiritual rule of the Catholic Church. In the long period of invasions the Christian monasteries were "important preservers of the k
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lack of evidence that instruments were used, is that these passages "were vocalized." Yet it has often been suggested that "the whole practice of organum came from the organ in the first place." The term organum was used to refer to instruments in general and though it "seems significant that the same term was used interchangeably for both instrument and early vocal polyphony," there is no evidence from the period that organum, in the context of polyphony, was related to the use of instruments. Thus the sole documented practice in which an organ was specifically used in church music is the alternatum performance with the choir, which is only established by the Faenza Codex of the early fifteenth century. The alternatum consisted of polyphonic versions (either improvised or composed) of parts of the chant played by the organ and alternating "with the other sections in normal sung plainchant." Wilson provides the example of the alternatum Kyrie in the organ would play the sections in italics, thus: "Kyrie Kyrie Kyrie / Christe Christe Christe / Kyrie Kyrie Kyrie."
The number of instruments used in secular music may be much greater than those in sacred music but nearly as little is known about how the were actually deploye
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Middle Ages, Francesco Landini, Christians Augustine, Aucassin Nicolette, Jerome Moravia, Notre Dame, Kyrie Kyrie, Faenza Codex, Roman Empire, Catholic Church, middle ages, secular music, fifteenth century, kyrie kyrie, sacred music, fourteenth century, instruments medieval, medieval music, voices instruments, instrumental music, ed oliver strunk, middle ages ed, history antiquity middle, ages ed oliver, antiquity middle ages,
Approximate Word count = 2849
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)
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