Chapter 5 - Later Medieval Chant
By around 1000 c.E. much of the chant needed to serve the canonical liturgy (canonical hours and Mass) had been created, and thus church musicians increasingly turned their attention to additions to that liturgy, specifically to tropes, sequences, and liturgical drama
Tropes . A trope is an addition of music or text, or both, to a pre-existing chant
The beginning of Christmas Trope . Hodie cantandus est nobis puer (Today we sing of a child) written c900 by Tuotilo of St. Gall This trope was created to serve as a preface to the Introit of the Mass for
Christmas Puer natus est nobis (A boy is born to us). It provided additional information about the coming of Christ and thus gave greater specifically and relevance to the Introit that followed.
The trope text "Omnipotens genitor Deus" embedded within a Kyrie melody
also ascribed to Tuotilo of St. Gall in some sources
Sequences The sequence originated as a musical and textual appendix to the Alleluia of the Mass. Indeed, the term "sequentia" means a "following thing." and in this case the sequence follows the Alleluia. The sequence is characterized by a syllabic setting of the text, and by double verse structure The earliest known writer of seguences was Notker Balbulus ("the Stammerer" c840-912) who wrote a volume containing forty-some sequences, including Natus ante saecula (Born before the ages)for high Mass on Christmas Day
Dies Irae The most famous sequence of all is Dies Irae (Day of Wrath), which serves
as the sequence of the Requiem Mass (Mass of the Dead). It was composed in Italy during the thirteenth century and includes a particularly vivid text.
one full of images from the Book of Apocalypse. It, too, makes use of double
verse structure.
Music in the Convent: Hildegard of Bingen. One might say that the great medieval figure of Hildegard of Bingen (1098. 1179) was the first "Renaissance man" that is to say, she was a polymath who wrote about botany, zoology, pharmacology, theology, as well as on church politics and music. Hildegard was a nun and then abbess who ran her a convent at Bingen on the banks of the Rhine River. Her nearly eighty surviving chants are gathered together in her book called Symphonia. These are marked by free flowing melodies and by especially vivid texts, as
can be seen the antiphon O rubor sanguinis (O, Redness of Blood)
Hildegard also compost a liturgical drama - a religious play-with-music intended to be inserted into the liturgy, usually before Mass. This drama Ordo virtutum (Play of the Virtues)is a ninety-minute musical allegory in which the human Soul, a woman who represents every woman, passes down the difficult road of life.
Chapter 6 - Troubadours & Trouveres
Countess Beatriz de Dia Around 1175 she composed the solde song by a trobairitz to survive today: Chantar m'er (I must sing).
a woman
o It also exhibits a repetitive formal plan (ABABCDB)
Rhyme scheme
Eleanor of Aquitaine (c1222-1