Donisha Anderson
Professor Moran
Introduction to Music
12/12/2014
The Outbreak of Something New
476-1450 is when it all began, it is when music first came alive. The middle Ages is what they called it also known as “the Dark Ages”. It was called the dark ages because society was destroyed and countries did not exist. And there were many wars and invasions going on during this Era. There were widespread of diseases and many death. As time went by later on in the Middle Ages villages started to form, universities and they began to merge together. The Catholic Church was very popular in these days it was the place to be if you wanted to survive. Whoever worked for the church was fed kept cloth and was not considered a servant or peasant. It was central to all aspects of life and was the official religion of the Roman Empire. The role of feudalism were that the nobility controlled everything and everybody. They really did not have much back in those days. Now I bet you are wondering then how did they make music?
First I’m going to give you a little background on the Middle Ages and then we could get right back to that question. The Catholic Church was the primary patron of arts. Most important musicians back then were priests and cathedrals was the music hall were everybody practiced and performed it was the music center. Some things in life never changed over the periods of time such as women rights and what they can and cannot do. Women were not permitted to sing in church they could only make music in their convents were they got music training. Which I think was totally unfair. Now that you have some background let’s hop right into Musical Elements. The tone color characteristics for the Medieval Era were vocal music was important and it was unison and chorus. They did not have any tools to make instruments so the number of instruments were limited. Most musicians in at this time performed their music acapella. The pipe organ was one of the most popular instruments. The musicians had music with thin texture because they only use their voices or one instrument. The rhythm had no feeling of meter and it was free flowing. The melody had modal tonality, a narrow range of pitches, and most melodic intervals moved by steps. The harmony was homophonic. This is what the music in this Era was based off of, I am going to listen to a piece from this Era and give my feedback and observations and feelings I got from it.
The song I chose is osuccessores composed by a famous composer at the time who go by the name of Hildegard born 1098 departed 1129. She was a famous German Nun and abbess. Hildegard was mystic and an author who composed Gregorian chants. Now I am going to listen and give my observations on osuccessores. The song was very short and song in another language. The tone color instrument type is body because their using their mouths and the instrument range is high. The instrument group is a small ensemble and the group performance is acapella with a thin texture. The rhythm has no feeling of meter and is free flowing. The tempo is medium and remained the same throughout the whole piece. The melody range was high and it had a good sequence order. It had movement going on in two directions up and down. The distance was close together and the phrase sounded exactly the same to me. The harmony was definitely homophonic and had a feeling of consonance and the dynamics was loud. The feeling I got from this piece was boredom and the reason being because I could not understand nothing they were saying and the tempo was real like at a slow medium speed and there were no usage of instruments making it only one idea going on which were the voices. Sometimes the instruments make it a little more exciting and expressive. The reason I chose this particular piece and artist is for the simple fact music or sound does not have a face on it, it could sound good even if it is a male or a female. Even though she got taunted for doing what
