Talk:Medieval music

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Contents

[edit] Rewrite

This page is extremely misleading. I'm going to reword and simplify in the hopes that someone who knows this stuff well will eventually come along.

[edit] European

Was there any other medieval music apart from "European" ?

Depends on what you mean by medieval. I would say yes if you use it to refer to a period in time, not if you only think that Europe had a medieval period. Ethnocentricity is a big enough problem with this 'pedia, and I think we should accept that medieval (which should of course, as any fule kno, be spelt mediaeval) while a local phenomenon has a potentially global application. Certainly there was music at this time in e.g. China, India, Malaysia, and probably of a higher order than most of the din being constructed in Western Europe.user:sjc
That's actually very correct. Most of the time when music historians are talking about music of Europe's medieval era they speak of the Ars Musica and the Ars Nova, which are well defined musical periods. However, far from being a "din" there was a great deal of sophistication present, and it was on it's way to becoming a quite unique entity. In the field of music, at least, Europes cultural hegemony is quite well deserved, as it was the only culture in the world to develop a sophisticated and regular usage of Harmony. The rest of the worlds musical cultures developed a great deal of sophistication in other areas, notably india in the realm of melodic complexity, and the rhythmic complexity in much of africa's music. The Medieval period in Europe is where harmonic polyphony developed, so speaking specifically of Medieval European music is actual a useful distinction to make, particularly when it is taken to mean "the music of Medieval Europe" as I think most people would.JFQ
Salve, JFQ! It was by way of what we call a joke in my part of the world! As you probably no doubt appreciate from the rest of my comments... user:sjc

OK, I took a crack at a rewrite. It's hard not to be excessively technical with this stuff ... I kept sacred and secular separate until the ars nova, when the two streams really come together for the first time in history. Haven't written up ars subtilior yet, or said anything about the rhythmic modes, or anything at all about notation (need to do an article with some good graphics for that one). I also didn't do too much about fitting this all in with literary, artistic, and general history (the split of the papacy to Avignon had a massive effect on 14th century music, for example). OK I'm tired now... Antandrus 03:50, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I think this article title was better as "Medieval European music". Hyacinth 03:41, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I don't like "European." I would prefer the traditional term "Western".DrG 2005 May 5

[edit] Reorganization

I have reorganized this page, focusing on chronology. DrG 2005 May 5

[edit] Mannerism and Subtilior

Anyone mind if I remove a bit of the discussion of mannerism and complexity discussion under Ars Subtilior and replace it with the discussion of subtilitas as precision which has dominated the discussion of the period for the last 25 years (e.g., in the new Ciconia book or in Anne Stone's, "What was more subtle in the Ars Subtilior?"). Also moved Jacopo from Subtilior to Trecento: I can't think of a piece that he wrote which could vaguely be considered subtilior. (Also Ciconia only wrote one A.S. piece, so maybe he's best moved to Trecento also, or to transition to the Renaissance). --Myke Cuthbert 08:17, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

By all means: go ahead. I don't have a copy of that new Ciconia book (I've been limping along on a 70s-era Hoppin, the 1980 Grove, as well as the online Grove, for info on the subtilior). Ciconia is probably best left out of subtilior and is transitional to Renaissance in my opinion. Thanks, Antandrus (talk) 16:00, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Peer review of Trobairitz

I've requested a PR of Trobairitz, any comments would be appreciated. Makemi 07:26, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Too much emphasis on rhythm in "theory and notation" section?

Given that Western music notation in general was developed during the medieval period, why does the theory and notation section begin by saying that the most important advances were in rhythmic notation? What about the invention of staff notation, or even the concept of diastematic notation in general? Granted, most of the later treatises mentioned in this section made significant advances in rhythmic notation, but from about 800-1200, the most important theoretical advances were in modal theory (that is, modes classifying pitch structure, not rhythmic), the gradual development of pitch notation, and the systematization and adoption of a standard gamut. The theory/notation perspective here seems too heavily weighted toward the late medieval period. Jzmckay 18:50, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and if people agree with this assessment, I might start an attempt at writing something to include these earlier developments. My only concern is that the "theory and notation" section is already quite long -- if a passage of similar length is added dealing with earlier theory (which I think is justified if we want to retain the level of coverage on rhythmic theory), this section might be too long for inclusion in the "overview" that opens the article. Any thoughts? Medieval music theory is certainly a huge subject and probably deserves its own article (which I'm not prepared to write at this time), but what would be best for now? Jzmckay 19:26, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree, it seems like the section starts out with fairly late medieval rhythmic notation. Perhaps a shorter overview for this section, and a later, fuller section on medieval theory, where the development of rhythmic notation could be one subsection, and the development of any sort of notation another subsection (starting with heighted neumes or some-such). Mak (talk) 23:10, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
At the very least, the word "mostly" in "mostly in the conception and notation of rhythm" should go - sounds like original thought to me. To play devil's advocate for a moment, though, the emphasis is understandable; the development of rhythmic notation in medieval music actually spurred the development of new styles and genres of music (especially the Notre Dame polyphony and the ars subtilior), whereas the development of diastemic notation didn't really affect the tonality of medieval music - except perhaps to eliminate some hypothetical semitones and quartertones, which could still be suggested with a quilisma or oriscus. Presumably, the earliest medieval music was diatonic, and it pretty much stayed that way, whereas rhythmic notation led to significant changes in performance and compositional styles.
That said, you're quite right: the section on notation is incomplete. Ideally, this I say add what you want, and when the section gets big enough, we can move it to its own article and leave the essentials in this article. I'll see if I can't add something soon; there's definitely a lot to cover. Peirigill 23:31, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Just to continue Peirigill's advocating for the devil, I would say that pitch-specific notation did have an effect on later theory and practice, since I've seen it argued (probably in Grout) that modified-organum came more from theorists not wanting to write out tri-tones, but not having the "technology" to avoid it, thus writing examples with oblique lines, rather than simply parallel lines. Also, as a Westerner, I have to remind myself that although our pitch-notation seems obvious and inevitable to me, other societies have come up with other solutions, and it did revolutionize how music was passed on, and, I would argue, conceived of. So, development of pitch-specific (or at least pitch-relativity-specific) notation is very important, and should be covered. Mak (talk) 00:35, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
The Theory and Notation section still needs editing. The lead sentence: "In music theory, the period saw several advances over previous practice, mostly in the conception and notation of rhythm" is simply incomplete. From a theoretical standpoint, modes and the gamut were completely reconceptualized over the centuries of the medieval period, and since we don't have notation before pitch notation, we can't make authoritative claims on what effect these things had on the pre-existing body of chant (though many have speculated). Arguably the structure and theory of the modes developed in medieval times had a far-reaching impact that reached well into the development of modern tonality. And since this period saw the advent of Western notation in general, saying "mostly in the... notation of rhythm" is simply wrong. Could we imagine how the musical developments allowed by rhythm that were cited by others above would have happened without the pitch notation developed in this period? Or, to be even more extreme, could we imagine how Western music would have been different had Dasian notation caught on as the primary notation for pitch (with its implicit "perfect fifth equivalence" instead of octave equivalence)?? The purported advances in rhythm (theoretical and notation) would simply have been impossible without pitch notation, and the theory of pitch essentially created the categories of modality that live on in modified forms to the present day, it seems like there should at least be a sentence or two about pitch... or at least not an opening sentence that implies that theoretical and notational advances of this time were "mostly" in rhythm. 76.118.181.158 04:19, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA Re-Review and In-line citations

Members of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles are in the process of doing a re-review of current Good Article listings to ensure compliance with the standards of the Good Article Criteria. (Discussion of the changes and re-review can be found here). A significant change to the GA criteria is the mandatory use of some sort of in-line citation (In accordance to WP:CITE) to be used in order for an article to pass the verification and reference criteria. Currently this article does not include in-line citations. It is recommended that the article's editors take a look at the inclusion of in-line citations as well as how the article stacks up against the rest of the Good Article criteria. GA reviewers will give you at least a week's time from the date of this notice to work on the in-line citations before doing a full re-review and deciding if the article still merits being considered a Good Article or would need to be de-listed. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us on the Good Article project talk page or you may contact me personally. On behalf of the Good Articles Project, I want to thank you for all the time and effort that you have put into working on this article and improving the overall quality of the Wikipedia project. Agne 03:18, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] No need

There is no need for inline citations in this article. The information presented here is "common knowledge" for those in the musicological discipline; distinct varification for all of these facts would needlessly clutter reader's screen. Internal controversy naturally persists about some of the issues this article presents, but where that is the case it is clearly delineated. As far as I'm concerned, you're welcome to take this article off of the "Good Article" list, for that in no way diminishes the "good"-ness of it; some of us, you see, are actually interested in the dissemination of knowledge, rather than merely some vigilance against "original thought" or a devout allegiance to the copyright law of the moment. 69.140.238.69 09:16, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Recent change to the page

I just reverted this change [1] (marked as "revert") -- it appears to be a switch back to a version about six to eight months ago, but I wasn't able to find exactly which one. Could you please explain what you were trying to do? Is there a problem with the current version? The revert re-introduced numerous spelling errors, borked the interwikis and did a lot of perhaps unintended things. Thanks, Antandrus (talk) 23:34, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Medieval music stubs

I've put a proposal in Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals/2007/March to create a new category, Category::Medieval_music_stubs incorporating at least 60 articles still at the stub level. There's currently no music-stub category for manuscripts (music-publication doesn't seem right) for music periods, etc. If you have comments or ideas or support for the proposal, I'd appreciate it added to the discussion page above. Thanks. --Myke Cuthbert 16:43, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Semiprotected

I've semiprotected this article for a week to see if this helps slow down the incessant vandalism it receives. Let me know here or on my talk page if anyone would like it taken off. Antandrus (talk) 01:33, 25 April 2007 (UTC)