Music History - The Dark Ages

The music in the Dark Ages are all sacred music, which means that they are all church music for praising God.  They talk about God, but not personal feelings at all.  The notation used to write down the music is called Gregorian chants, which sometimes also called plain chants.

(Gregorian Chants is used in this period)

Pope Gregory I was the one who organised all the music written in to a book called "Liber Usualis",  which means usual book in English.  At that time, women cannot sing and compose any songs.  They can only go to church and listen to them.  Thus, almost all the composers are men and they do the singing as well.  Countertenors are men that trained for singing falsetto, so they can sing in a range higher than tenor and fit the songs in high pitch.


The texture of the music in the Dark Ages is monophonic, which means there is only one melody, with no accompaniment at all.  Antiphony is also used in church music, which means a singer sing out the text from bible, then the chorus response to the singer with the same text.  Melissma, which means a single syllable carry out for more than one tone, is used for holy words such as "God", "Mary" and "Jesus". For the other words, syllabic approach is usually used.


Let's listen to "Die Irae", which is the famous Latin Catholic hymn at that time :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dlr90NLDp-0


Enjoy!! :)