 Age between “the glorious present and a glorious past”  Glorious past = classic antiquity  Ages = because so much time passed  Broken into two periods: early period and later period

 Society was highly organized by a rigid class system known as feudalism.  Kings and Queens ruled over a specific amount of land and granted land only to a small number of noble families.  Most of the population worked in servitude (virtually slaves)

 As the forests cleared, people established small villages and towns. These became central for trade and commerce.  Common man could now sell goods  The feudal system breaks down and gradually the boundaries of many European countries that we know today were established (more or less)

 Wars were frequent  People worked in miserable conditions  no vaccines or antibiotics

 Spread of Christianity  Education becomes more widespread (universities were established)  New towns were the centers of trade and commerce (cultural exchange)  The arts – music, painting, poetry, sculpture, and architecture flourished; the church often paid for the arts  Invention heavy wheeled plow (acres of land could be cultivated, increase in food production)  Invention of the stirrup enabled soldiers to fight from horseback  Invention of spinning wheel, the wheelbarrow, mechanical clock (12 th cen) compasses, windmills, eyeglasses (13 th cen) plate armor, gunpowder, paper, (14 th cen)

 A large quantity of music from this period survives.  Most of the surviving music was designed for use in the Christian (Roman Catholic) liturgy, known as liturgical music  Music is mainly composed for voice  Also had folk songs, work songs, dances and instrumental pieces, though not much has survived in notation  Later in the Medieval Period secular song and polyphony rise. Secular song = non-religious (gave rise to other song topics (love, dancing, political, loyalty) Polyphony = more than one line sounding at the same time (gave rise to harmony)

 Plainchant –vocal music for church services, also known as Gregorian Chant after Pope Gregory I  Characteristics – monophonic – only one line of music is performed at a time.  May be syllabic = one note for every syllable of the text or melismatic = large number of notes sung to a single syllable  Sung to modes  Flowing rhythm with no clearly defined beat