Example Of Role Of The Middle Ages Cathedral In Music Essay

The medieval period, which is also referred to as the Middle Ages, is basically the period between 400-1400 AD. Historians usually regard this as the longest and the major era in the European history; it separated the Greece civilization that it replaced, with the modern world of today. There were a lot of intellectual, artistic and cultural movements in Europe that spanned the medieval period up to the early modern period of civilization, Scholars usually refers to these movements as Renaissance. During the middle ages, music was not often written down, it was only played in feasts, churches and mostly for dancing and entertainment. However, major developments in music trace its success from the Middle Ages cathedrals as I will discuss in this essay.
The Middle Ages cathedrals held multifaceted roles. Apart from being the centre for worship, the daily lives of the people revolved around them. It was a center for learning and holding various ceremonies. Many modern music scholars pay homage to the cathedrals for developing the modern form of music, it used to teach and practice Christian music to the society. The church music initially comprised just a single melody line that was referred to as the plainchant. Thereafter, the idea of combining two and successive melody lines was discovered and adopted by the big cathedral churches such as the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris where the two melody lines, perotin, was discovered. Another popular type of religious music introduced in the Cathedral was called motet. In a motet, each vocal lines had their own words, therefore, you could even have three texts going at once, and at times even in different languages.
These discoveries and improvements were a major breakthrough in the music field. It is for these reasons why the cathedrals and modern music cannot be detached. It may be almost a thousand years piece of architecture that remains mysterious to most of us, but it is the mother of the good music we listen to today.