Liturgical Drama

•Liturgical Drama is a European musical tradition in the early Middle Ages.

•In its original form, it shows Roman drama with Christian stories such as the Gospel,
the Passion, and the lives of the saints-grafted on.
•Liturgical Dramas were believed to be performed by traveling actors and musician.

Goliards
•The Goliards were traveling poet-musicians of Europe from 10th to mid 13th century.
•They were mostly scholars and clergymen, who wrote and sang in Latin.
•They were believed to have influenced the troubadour-trouvère tradition which
followed.
•Their poetry is mostly secular, although some of the songs celebrate religious ideals,
some dealt with dishonesty, drunkenness, and are frankly profane.

•During the high medieval period, the center of activity was at the cathedral of Notre
Dame itself.
•Music of this period is at times called Parisian Organum which represents the start of
Ars Antiqua.
•In this period, rhythmic notation first appeared in Western music.
•This context-based method of rhythmic notation was known as rhythmic modes.

Troubadour Music
•Troubadours compose and perform Old Occitan lyric poetry in the Middle Ages,
(1100-1350).
•The term troubadour refers to man since it sounds masculine, and female troubadours
are referred to as trobairitz.

•Troubadour tradition started in Occitania, late 11th century.

•According to Dante Alighieri, troubadour lyric is a musical, poetical, and rhetorical
fiction.
•Themes of troubadour song are centered on chivalry and courtly love.
•Majority of these songs were standard, intellectual, and metaphysical.
•Humorous and rude satires characterize many of their songs.
•Their songs can be classified into three styles.
•These are the trobar clus or close, trobar leu which means light, and trobar ric which is
rich.
•Among the many genres, the most famous is the canso.

•The troubadours and trouvères’ music was a dialect tradition of monophonic secular
song.
•Their songs may be accompanied by instruments, sung by professional, occasionally
traveling musicians who were skilled as poets as they were singers and instrumentalists.
•Troubadours use Occitan or Provençal language, while trouvères use Old French.
•The period of the troubadours corresponded to the flowering of cultural life in Provence
which lasted through the 12th century and into the first decade of the 13th century.
•Typical subjects of troubadour song were chivalry, courtly love, and war.
•The Portuguese João Soares de Paiva, the troubadours of the movement, and not the
Occitan troubadours who are often in courts nearby León and Castile, wrote almost
entirely cantigas.
•From probably around the mid- 13th century, these songs also called cantares or trovas,
were compiled as songbooks

•Galician-Portuguese cantigas can be grouped into three basic genres, namely cantigas de
amigo or female-voiced love poetry, cantigas de amor or male-voiced love poetry, and
cantigas d’escarnio e de maldizer or poetry of insult and mockery.
•These three are in the technical sense lyric genres and they were strophic songs with
their musical accompaniment or introduction by a stringed instrument.
•All three genres also have dramatic elements, characterized as lyric-dramatic.

Late Medieval Music

•Ars Nova which means new art, or new technique was coined by Philippe de Vitry to
distinguish the practice from the music of the immediately preceding age.
•During the Ars Nova Era, secular music acquired a polyphonic sophistication formerly
found only in sacred music.
•This development was expected considering the secular character of the early
Renaissance although this music is distinctive considered “medieval.”

•Ars Nova music has been known for its lyrical or melodic character back in the 14th
century in many aspects.
•This type of texture remained a feature of Italian music in the popular 15th and 16th
centuries secular genres as well, and was an important influence on the eventual
development of the trio texture that revolutionized music in the 17th century.

•The end of the Medieval music era is marked by Ars subtilior --- a highly methodical
style.
•This attempted to combine the French and Italian styles.
•Music of this form was highly stylized, with rhythmic difficulty that was unmatched
until the 20th century.
•Ars Nova has been the practice of isorhythm.
•Early 15th century, instead of using isorhythmic techniques in one or two voices, or
interchanging them among voices, some works were done with isorhythmic texture
which opposes the systematic ordering of rhythmic and tonal elements of the 20th
century.

•Famous composer of Medieval music is Adam de la Halle.

Adam de la Halle
•Adam de la Halle, also known as Adam le Bossu or Adam the Hunchback was born
sometime around 1237 and died around 1288 or after 1306.
•He was a French-born trouvère, poet, and musician.
•His literary and musical works are chansons and poetic debates. (jeux-partis) in the style
of the trouvères, polyphonic rondel, and motets in the style of the early liturgical
polyphony.
•Adam’s musical play, “Le Jeu de Robin et Marion,” is considered the earliest surviving
secular French play with music.
•The moniker “the Hunchback” was probably a family name because Adam himself says
that he was not one.

•At the court of Charles, Adam wrote his most famous work --- Le Jeu de Robin et
Marion.
•Adam’s shorter pieces are accompanied by music, of which a transcript in modern
notation, with the original score, is given in Coussemaker’s edition.
•His Jeu in 1896 pastoral Robin m’aime, Robin m’a consist of dialogue varied by
refrains present in popular song.
•Melodies carry the character of folk music, and are more spontaneous and melodious
than the more elaborate music of his motets and songs.
•Fétis considered Le Jeu de Robin et Marion and Le Jeu de la Feuillée forerunners of the
comic opera.
•An adaptation of Le Jeu Robin et Marion, by Julien Tiersot, was played at Arras by a
company from the Paris Opéra-Comique on the festival honoring Adam de la Halle in
1896.

•His other play, Le Jeu Adam or Le Jeu de la Feuillée, is a satirical drama where he
introduced himself, his father, and the citizens of Arras with their strangeness.
•His works include a congé, or satirical farewell to the city of Arras, and an unfinished
chanson de geste in honor of Charles of Anjou, Le roi de Sicile.