These were three-part secular pieces, which featured the two higher voices in canon, with an underlying instrumental long-note accompaniment.įinally, purely instrumental music also developed during this period, both in the context of a growing theatrical tradition and for court consumption. The madrigal form also gave rise to canons, especially in Italy where they were composed under the title Caccia. Similar to the polyphonic character of the motet, madrigals featured greater fluidity and motion in the leading line. While early motets were liturgical or sacred, by the end of the thirteenth century the genre had expanded to include secular topics, such as courtly love.ĭuring the Renaissance, the Italian secular genre of the madrigal also became popular. Of greater sophistication was the motet, which developed from the clausula genre of medieval plainchant and would become the most popular form of medieval polyphony. The principles of the organum date back to an anonymous ninth century tract, the Musica enchiriadis, which established the tradition of duplicating a preexisting plainchant in parallel motion at the interval of an octave, a fifth or a fourth. The organum, for example, expanded upon plainchant melody using an accompanying line, sung at a fixed interval, with a resulting alternation between polyphony and monophony. The earliest innovations upon monophonic plainchant were heterophonic.
The development of such forms is often associated with the Ars nova. Polyphonic genres began to develop during the high medieval era, becoming prevalent by the later thirteenth and early fourteenth century. During the earlier medieval period, the liturgical genre, predominantly Gregorian chant, was monophonic. Medieval music was both sacred and secular. Early versions of the organ, fiddle (or vielle), and trombone (called the sackbut) existed. Instruments without sound boxes like the jaw harp were also popular in the time. The hurdy-gurdy was (and still is) a mechanical violin using a rosined wooden wheel attached to a crank to “bow” its strings.
911) cited the Byzantine lyra, in his lexicographical discussion of instruments as a bowed instrument equivalent to the Arab rabāb and typical instrument of the Byzantines along with the urghun (organ), shilyani (probably a type of harp or lyre) and the salandj (probably a bagpipe). The Persian geographer Ibn Khurradadhbih of the ninth century (d. The bowed lyra of the Byzantine Empire was the first recorded European bowed string instrument.
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