Early Music

†915 The music of Tuotilo

Tuotilo Renaissance maestro in 9th century Tuotilo was a Frankish monk at the Abbey of Saint Gall. He was a composer, and according to Ekkehard IV a century later, also a poet, musician, painter and sculptor. Various trope melodies can be assigned to Tuotilo, but works of other mediums are attributed with less certainty. He was a student of Iso of St. Gallen [de] and friends with the fellow monk Notker the Stammerer. Tuotilo played several instruments, including the harp. The history of the ecclesiastical drama begins with the trope sung as Introit of the Mass on Easter Sunday. It has come down to us in a St. Gallen manuscript dating from the time of Tuotilo. According to […]

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†865 The music of Kassia

Hymn of Kassia  Kassia, Cassia or Kassiani was a Byzantine-Greek composer, hymnographer and poet. She holds a unique place in Byzantine music as the only known woman whose music appears in the Byzantine liturgy.  Approximately fifty of her hymns are extant, most of which are stichera, though at least 26 have uncertain attribution.The authenticity issues are due to many hymns being anonymous, and others ascribed to different authors in different manuscripts. She was an abbess of a convent in the west of Constantinople. Additionally, many epigrams and gnomic verses are attributed to her, at least 261. Kassia is notable as one of at least two women in the middle Byzantine period known to have written in their own names, the other being Anna Comnena. Like […]

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†930 – the music of Hucbald

Hucbald was a Benedictine monk active as a music theorist, poet, composer, teacher, and hagiographer.   He was long associated with Saint-Amand Abbey, so is often known as Hucbald of St Amand. Deeply influenced by Boethius‘ De Institutione Musica, Hucbald’s (De) Musica, formerly known as De harmonica institutione, aims to reconcile ancient Greek music theory and the contemporary practice of Gregorian chant with the use of many notated examples. Among the leading music theorists of the Carolingian era, he was likely a near contemporary of Aurelian of Réôme, the unknown author of the Musica enchiriadis, and the anonymous authors of other music theory texts Commemoratio brevis, Alia musica, and De modis.

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Hildegard von Bingen (1098 – 1179)

Known for: Medieval mystic or prophet and visionary. Abbess. Composer of music. Writer of books on spirituality, visions, medicine, nature. Correspondent with many ordinary and powerful people. Critic of secular and religious leaders. Also Known As: Hildegard von Bingen, Sibyl of the Rhine. Born in Bemersheim (Böckelheim), West Franconia (now Germany), she was the tenth child of a well-to-do family. She’d had visions connected with illness (perhaps migraines) from a young age, and in 1106 her parents sent her to a 400-year-old Benedictine monastery which had only recently added a section for women. They put her under the care of […]

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1261 Sumer is icumen in

“Sumer is icumen in” is the incipit of a medieval English round or rota of the mid-13th century; it is also known variously as the Summer Canon and the Cuckoo Song.  The line translates approximately to “Summer has come in” or “Summer has arrived”. The song is written in the Wessex dialect of Middle English. Although the composer’s identity is unknown today, it may have been W. de Wycombe. The manuscript in which it is preserved was copied between 1261 and 1264. This rota is the oldest known musical composition featuring six-part polyphony. It is sometimes called the Reading […]

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1194 Bernart de Ventadorn

Bernart de Ventadorn (also Bernard de Ventadour or Bernat del Ventadorn; 1135–1194) was a prominent troubadour of the classical age of troubadour poetry. Now thought of as “the Master Singer” he developed the cançons into a more formalized style which allowed for sudden turns.   Youtube Playlist (click top right icon for songtitles)  He is remembered for his mastery as well as popularisation of the trobar leu style, and for his prolific cançons, which helped define the genre and establish the “classical” form of courtly love poetry, to be imitated and reproduced throughout the remaining century and a half […]

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†912 Notker the Stammerer

Notker the Stammerer, also known as Notker Balbulus, or simply Notker, was a Benedictine monk at the Abbey of Saint Gall, now in Switzerland, where he was a leading literary scholar of the Early Middle Ages. He was active as a poet, scholar and possibly composer, as he is usually credited with an important collection of early sequences in Liber hymnorum. Notker wrote Vita Sancti Galli and is commonly accepted to be the “Monk of Saint Gall” (Monachus Sangallensis) who wrote Gesta Karoli (the “deeds of Charlemagne“). He was contemporary with the fellow monks Tuotilo and Ratpert. Youtube Playlist (click […]

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The School of Notre Dame

During the Middle Ages, the Parisian cathedral of Notre Dame was a hotbed of musical innovation. Two of the brightest musical lights of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries worked there: Masters Leonin and Perotin. Leonin’s fame came from his collection of two-voiced organa to be used for both church Masses and Offices. This tome is known as Magnus Liber Organi, or The Great Book of Organum, and was completed by about 1180. Perotin’s fame came a generation later, from developing organum with three voices, and even four voices. But Leonin and particularly Perotin needed to pin down rhythms […]

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1033 Guido of Arezzo & His Impact on Music

Guido of Arezzo was a monk who lived during the Middle Ages, and may be considered as one of the most influential figures in the history of modern music. During the Middle Ages, the monastery was one of the most important European institutions. The worship of God was of paramount importance in the life of a medieval monk, and one of the ways this worship was rendered was through the chanting of sacred music. Guido of Arezzo sought to rectify one of the problems that plagued these chants, and it was because of this contribution that he has made such […]

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