Ancient, medieval and Renaissance music
Ancient foundations
Greek music theory supplies the vocabulary later eras reuse: tetrachords, the Dorian, Phrygian and Lydian modes, the doctrine of ethos, and Pythagorean ratios. Almost no Greek music survives in notation, so exam questions focus on concepts and on how they were transmitted to medieval theory.
Chant and early polyphony
- Gregorian chant: monophonic, modal, orally transmitted, notated in neumes; later square notation on four lines. It sets the Mass Ordinary (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei) and the Proper, plus the Divine Office.
- Organum: parallel, free, then melismatic. Notre Dame: Léonin's Magnus liber organi, Pérotin's four-voice organum.
- Ars Nova (c. 1320, Philippe de Vitry): mensural notation, isorhythm (a repeating talea rhythm with a repeating color pitch pattern), Machaut's Messe de Nostre Dame.
Renaissance
- Imitative polyphony, cantus firmus, paraphrase and parody mass; Josquin, Ockeghem, Palestrina (smooth dissonance treatment, post-Tridentine clarity), Lassus, Byrd.
- Madrigal: Italian, then English, with word painting; Petrucci's 1501 Harmonice Musices Odhecaton marks music printing.
- Poland: Wacław z Szamotuł, Mikołaj Gomółka's Melodie na psałterz polski (1580), Mikołaj Zieleński.
Worked example
A motet repeats one rhythmic pattern three times over a tenor that also repeats a melodic segment. The rhythmic pattern is the talea, the pitch pattern the color; when they realign, the isorhythmic cycle closes. This is an Ars Nova marker, not a Renaissance one.
Traps that cost marks
Do not date Ars Nova to the Renaissance; do not call every medieval polyphonic piece organum; distinguish cantus firmus from paraphrase in Mass questions.