Noble birth of music and travelling musicians
 During the Middle Ages, the European church music was sung in Latin.
From around the 10th century, professional male musicians provided music
for entertainment. Some travelled around the countryside, playing in
rich households for money and food. They wrote songs and accompanied
themselves on musical instruments.
Secular poetry and polyphony played a major role during the medieval
time as the most significant development began in these two genres in
western classical music. It is said that the western harmony origins
with the development of polyphony. People enjoyed early part of music
for its own sake without understanding the essence of music and what was
described in it. However polyphonic music was used by rich locals in
feasts and it became a symbol of their social class and vanity item
which is even visible today.
Artistic developments
Though the church music or sacred music played the dominant role in
medieval period, secular music also had the artistic developments.
However secular music spread across Europe combined with sacred themes.
Travelling aristocratic singers sang these songs moving from one place
to another and it is believed that Richard Wagner was inspired by their
music in later period.
Medieval musicians can be divided into two types: Minstrels and
Troubadours.
Minstrels were professional musicians and instrumentalists. They were
often employed by troubadours, trouveres, (poet-musicians, often of
noble birth) and minnesingers (German aristocratic poet musicians) to
play accompaniments to their songs. Some found steady employment at a
court or castle. Others wandered freely form one place to another
earning their money.
However a successful minstrel was far more than a mere musician. As a
12th century manuscript points out, he was expected ‘to be good at
storytelling and rhyming, and trials of skill’. He must know how to play
the drum, the cymbals and the hurdy-gurdy (a musical instrument); to
juggle with apples, and to throw and catch knives; to imitate birdsongs,
to perform card tricks, to play the citole and the lute, the harp and
the fiddle and many other instruments. They created ballads and
memorised long poems as well.
Travelling artistes
A great many songs were written by the troubadours. They lived in
southern France and travelled from one place to another. Many troubadour
poems are concerned with courtly love and the idealisation of women and
their performances were open for common people as well as nobles. The
melodies of these songs presented the problems of present day
performance. They were written usually in the same square shaped
‘neumes’ as those used for plainsongs. The pitch was clearly indicated
but not the rhythm.
It is clear that the human voice became the main musical instrument
at that time. As the Christianity spread, hymns and secular songs became
popular mostly among aristocrats and music became a part of church life.
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