9-15 Reading

pp. 60-63 - entries on Troubadour Songs and More Terms from the Middle Ages

p. 65 - entry on Arras

Troubadour songs

Secular music, often about love/lust. Written by troubadours, low ranking nobility & educated musicians who worked in the homes of nobility.

Middle Ages Vocab

• Alba: Troubadour song about two lovers parting as the sun rises, often warned by a friend standing guard of the approach of one or both of their spouses.
• Alleluia: Melismatic responsorial plainchant from the Proper portion of the mass.
• Antiphon: Responsorial plainchant with melismas used at the cadences or occasionally to embellish a word or phrase; sung as part of a mass (Proper).
• Cantiga: A medieval song (like a troubadour song). Some cantigas have sacred subject matter, but the majority of them are secular.
• Codex: This is a medieval collection of scores. You may see this word in a printed program in the spot where the composer's name usually goes.
• Communion: Music sung during the sacramental portion of the mass (Proper).
• Dies Irae: A text used in Requiem (funeral) masses. Many composers have composed musical settings of this text, but one of the medieval plainchant settings has become so well-known that it is used in music in later time periods when the composer wants the listener to feel a sense of dread.
• Estampie: A type of secular dance music.
• Gradual: Highly melismatic plainchant sung as part of a mass (Proper).
• Introit: An introductory responsorial plainchant sung by the choir (Proper); this is the first thing you will hear at a mass.
• Liturgical drama: A play with music in which liturgical texts have been dramatized. These were not performed as part of a church service.
• Offertory: Music during the portion of the mass in which the bread and wine are prepared for Communion (Proper).
• Pastorela: Troubadour song about a knight encountering a shepherd girl and the results of such a meeting; could be bawdy or comical in nature.
• Requiem: A funeral mass.
• Salut d'amour: A love letter troubadour song.
• Sequence: Syllabic plainchants (with small neumatic moments) with an AA BB CC DD, etc., form; sung as part of a mass (Proper).
• Tract: Nonresponsorial, mainly neumatic and syllabic plainchant, with melismas at the cadences; sung as part of a mass (Proper).
• Trope: A technique by which extra phrases are added to liturgical texts in church music.