Music both influences and reflects the times in which it was created. In the Middle Ages, the previous Dark Ages, the Crusades, and the feudal system all impacted the types and forms of music in the period. Charlemagne standardized the church mass and promoted the Gregorian chant, to the point of threatening excommunication if any other were performed. Musical notation — the staff line — was developed during the period. The troubadours of France, Meistersingers of Germany,the Cantus Firmus of Italy, and the instruments that played the music are all included in this thorough guide to music of the middle ages. Topics include: the British Isles, Dance Music, Eastern Europe, France, Germanic Lands, Harps, Italy, the Low Countries, Spain, and more.

Music of the Middle Ages provides a comprehensive, chronological survey of musical style and compositional technique from early plainchant to the flourishing of fourteenth-century polyphony.--From publisher description.

This book explores the role of music in the some five hundred feature-length films on the Middle Ages produced between the late 1890s and the present day. Haines focuses on the tension in these films between the surviving evidence for medieval music and the idiomatic tradition of cinematic music. The latter is taken broadly as any musical sound occurring in a film, from the clang of a bell off-screen to a minstrel singing his song. Medieval film music must be considered in the broader historical context of pre-cinematic medievalisms and of medievalist cinema’s main development in the course of the twentieth century as an American appropriation of European culture. The book treats six pervasive moments that define the genre of medieval film: the church-tower bell, the trumpet fanfare or horn call, the music of banquets and courts, the singing minstrel, performances of Gregorian chant, and the music that accompanies horse-riding knights, with each chapter visiting representative films as case studies. These six signal musical moments, that create a fundamental visual-aural core central to making a film feel medieval to modern audiences, originate in medievalist works predating cinema by some three centuries.

A unique history of the vast repertory of monophonic music of the Middle Ages.

This book seeks to understand the music of the later Middle Ages in a fuller perspective, moving beyond the traditional focus on the creative work of composers in isolation to consider the participation of performers and listeners in music-making.

What were the methods and educational philosophies of music teachers in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance? What did students study? What were the motivations of teacher and student? Contributors to this volume address these topics and other -- including gender, social status, and the role of the Church -- to better understand the identities of music teachers and students from 650 to 1650 in Western Europe. This volume provides an expansive view of the beginnings of music pedagogy, and shows how the act of learning was embedded in the broader context of the early Western art music tradition.