Page 76 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

Listening Cue
Guillaume de Machaut, Kyrie of Messe de Nostre Dame (c. 1360)
Genre: Mass
Texture: Polyphonic and monophonic
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what to listen for: The alternation between polyphony and chant, and the interplay between passages of dissonant
chords and consonant ones, the latter coming at the ends of phrases
READ . . . a detailed Listening Guide of this selection online.
LiSTEN TO . . . this selection streaming online.
WATCH . . . an Active Listening Guide of this selection online.
DO . . . Listening Exercise 4.1, Machaut, Kyrie of Messe de Nostre Dame, online.
watch . . . a modern-day troubadour, online.
Music at the Court
Outside the walls of the cathedral, there was yet another musical world: one of popular song and dance centered at the court. If the music of the Church was calculated to move the soul toward spiritual reflection, that of the court was meant to move the body to sing and dance. The court emerged as a cen- ter for the patronage of the arts during the years 1150–1400, as kings, dukes, counts, and lesser nobles increasingly assumed responsibility for defending the land and regulating social behavior. The court embraced forms of public entertainment not permitted by Church authorities. Here, itinerant actors, jugglers, jesters, and animal acts provided welcome diversions at banquets and feasts. Minstrels wandered from castle to castle, playing instruments and bringing with them the latest tunes, along with the news and gossip of the day.
Troubadours and Trouvères
France was the center of this new courtly art, though French customs quickly spread to Spain, Italy, and Germany as well. The poet-musicians who flour- ished in the courts of southern France were called troubadours and those in the north trouvères. These names are distant ancestors of the modern French word trouver (“to find”). Indeed, the troubadours and trouvères were “finders,” or inventors, of a new genre of vocal expression called the chan- son (French for “song”). In all, the troubadours and trouvères created several thousand chansons. Most are monophonic love songs that extol the courtly ideals of faith and devotion, whether to the ideal lady, the just seigneur (lord), or the knight crusading in the Holy Land. Almost all are in strophic form. The
54 chapter four music in the middle ages and renaissance
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