Music in the Middle Ages 650-1450 - Short and Sweet

This age period for culture and musical style has always fascinated me, personally. The first development I would like to discuss is the cultural climate changes because the culture directly affects the music of any given time or era. The culture was changing so much during that time and simply stated people were becoming more aware, less afraid of the church, and smarter due to universities and other areas of study becoming more readily available. Naturally in any culture or society (but especially in earlier times), religion plays a huge role in musical style. The culture was significantly changing due to the break-down and separation of the all-powerful church. Because the culture was changing, becoming more lax and people were not as afraid to express themselves, there was a musical revolution. This revolution included singing new music, more complex music and new instruments with which to experiment. The music becomes more notated and widespread and therefore more copies were saved from the later middle ages. With meter and notation we are able to, in our age, recreate the pieces more effectively. Because the older middle age pieces were missing these crucial elements, it is nearly impossible for us to recreate anything, if found (also due to the scarcity of parchment during the early years). We can only assume how people use to sing Gregorian chant in early medieval times.

The notation of music was pressured to change over time because the pieces themselves became more and more complex. Because there were more instruments used in the music and with vocals included - the music required more than one person to have a copy of the music in order to play together harmoniously and in sync with one another. It was a pressure due to the necessity of the complexity of the music.

In regards to having a source, or to back up the last statement, it is simply obvious with the documents (musical artwork found from the era(s)) and comparing the pieces on a time line. The more complex, the more copies, the more documents found in any give era.