Music History people 1

Magnus Liber organi

"great book of organum" Written during the 12th and early 13th centuries, this series of compositions is attributed to masters of the Notre Dame school of music, most notably Léonin and his successor Pérotin. represents a step in the evolution of Western music between plainchant and the intricate polyphony of the later 13th and 14th centuries

Notker of St. Gall

"the stammerer" (ca. 840-912) a Frankish monk at the monastery of St. Gall in Switzerland, explained how he learned to write words syllabically under long melismas. He appears to be describing how to write new texts for existing sequence melodies, but some interpret this as the invention of the sequence.

Leonin

(1163-1190) canon at cathedral, poet, composer was described by Anon. IV as "best composer of organum"

Perotinus

(1180-1207) was described by Anon. IV as "best composer of discantus"

Philipe de vitry

(1291-1361), French composer, poet, church canon, administrator for the duke of Bourbon and the king of France, and late bishop of Meaux, is named by one writer as the "inventor of a new art". Several versions of a treatise from ca 1320 representing Vitry's teaching. This new art included perfect and imperfect divisions of rhythm.

Roman de Fauvel

(1317) an allegorical narrative poem satirizing corruption in politics and the church, apparently written as a warning to the king of France and enjoyed in high political circles at court. Fauvel, a horse who rises from the stable to a powerful position, symbolizes a world turned upside down, in which the king outranks the pope and France is defiled. Flattery, Avarice, Villainy, Variete, envy, and lachete. He eventually marries and produces little fauvels who destroy the world. It has 169 pieces of music interpolated throughout the poem. First examples of motets in the ars nova style.

Hundred Years War

(1337-1453) between France and England. Poverty, war, taxes, and political grievances combined to spark peasant and urban rebellions.

Messe de Nostre Dame

(Mass of Our Lady) is a polyphonic mass composed before 1365 by a French poet,composer Guillame de Machaut. This was one of the great masterpieces because it is the first complete setting of the ordinary of the mass attributable to a single composer. It consists of the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei followed by the dismissal Ite, missa est. It is in 4 voices.

Musica Enchiriadis

(music handbook) Directed at students who aspired to enter clerical orders, emphasizing practical matters over theoretical speculation. It describes eight modes, provides exercises for locating semitones in chant, and explains the consonances and how they are used to sing in polyphony.

Jacopo da Bologna

1340-1386, was an Italian composer of the Trecento. He wrote mostly madrigals, including both canonic and non-canonic. His setting of Non al suo amante, written about 1350, is the only know contemporaneous setting of Petrarch's poetry.

Guido of Arezzo

991-1033) developed square notation developed a staff system chant notation has a 4 line staff with c and f clefs

Egeria

A Spanish nun (400) described the services in Jerusalem, noting the psalms and hymns sung between prayers and Bible readings. A crucial document of early Christian practices. (Itinerarium Egeriae)

Liber usualis

Book of common use. It contains the most frequently used texts and chants for the Mass and Office.

Anonymous IV

His writings are the main source for understanding the Notre Dame school of polyphony. He is mainly noted for having written about Léonin and Pérotin, thereby assigning names to two of the composers of the music of the Notre Dame school who otherwise would have been anonymous. He mentions Léonin and Pérotin as the best composers of organum and discant respectively.

Babylonian captivity

In 1305, King Philip 4 of France engineered the election of a French pope, Clement V, who never went to Rome because of hostility there to foreigners. Form 1309 until 1377, the popes resided at Avignon in SE France, under virtual control of the French king.

Charlemagne

In 768, he was the son of Pepin who was crowned Holy Roman Emperor and gave unity to the empire. Important texts about his effort for chant unification, "John, the Deacon, Life of Gregory the Great" (873-875) "Notker Balbulus, Life of Charlemagne" (884)

Gregory I

Pope (590-604) founder of the chants the legend says the chants were dictated to Gregory by the Holy Spirit.

Franco of Cologne

The composer and theorist codified the new system of Franconian notation in his Ars cantus mensurabilis, written around 1280. For the first time, relative durations were signified by note shapes. These included the double long, long, breve, and semibreve.

Guillaume de Machaut

The leading composer and poet of the French ars nova period, (1300-1377) was supported by royal and aristocratic patrons who allowed him to produce over 140 musical works, mostly settings of his own poetry, along with 300 other poems.

cantigas de sancta maria

a collection of over 400 cantigas (songs) in Galician-Portuguese in honor of the Virgin Mary. The collection was prepared about 120-90 under the direction of King Alfonso el Sabio (the Wise) of Castile and Leon (NW Spain) and preserved in four beautiful manuscripts.

Great Schism

after the Babylonian captivity of the papacy, there were rival claimants to the papacy in Rome, in Avignon an later in Pisa in 1378-1417. This state of affairs, compounded by the often corrupt life of the clergy, drew sharp criticism, expressed both in writings and in the rise of popular heretical movements.

Johannes de Grocheio

as a Parisian musical theorist of the early fourteenth century. he is the author of the treatise Ars musicae ("The art of music") (c. 1300), an attempt to describe the music of his time as it was practiced in and around Paris. He divides music into three categories: Musica simplex (popular music; music of the layperson) Composita (according to metrical rules; music of the educated person) Ecclesiastica (music of the Church)

Ars cantus mensurabilis

is a musical treatise from the mid-13th century, c. 1260-1280 (Medieval Period) written by German music theorist Franco of Cologne. This was the first treatise to suggest that individual notes could have their own rhythmic durations. This new rhythmic system was the foundation for mensural notation system and the ars nova style

Carmina Burana

name given to a manuscript of 254 poems and dramatic texts mostly from the 11th or 12th century, although some are from the 13th century. The pieces are mostly bawdy, irreverent, and satirical; they were written principally in Medieval Latin; a few in Middle High German, and some in Old French. Most of the poems and songs appear to be the work of Goliards, clergy (mostly students) who set up and satirized the Catholic Church.

Ars nova

style of polyphony from 14th century France, distinguished from earlier styles by a new system of rhythmic notation that allowed duple or triple division of note values, syncopation, and great rhythmic flexibility.

Francesco Landini

was the leading composer of ballate and the foremost Italian musician of the Trecento. (1325-1397) 89 of his 140 ballate are for two voices and 42 are for three voices.

Micrologus

written by Guido of Arezzo, (ca 1025-28) a practical guide for singers that covers notes, intervals, scales, the modes, melodic composition, and improvised polyphony. It was commissioned by the bishop of Arezzo.

Hildegard of Bingen

wrote the liturgical drama, Ordo virtutum (1151) founder of convent, musician, poet, artist, advisor to kings and princes, wrote on scientific subjects- medicine, sci vas-account of her visions. Most known for her prophecies.