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We have very little music of the Early Middle Ages, and what we do have is mostly unperformable because the notation used at the time was too primitive to include information on how long to hold notes, and was usually too primitive to give absolute relationships between pitches of different notes.

Nevertheless, there is music of the time that we have. Nearly all of what we have is liturgical. It is in the form of chants, the Gregorian chants being most famous. These are melodically very simple, with open rhythm. They were sung in monotone, or in simple organum, in which one group of people sang the basic chant, and another sang the same same chant at a fixed interval, for example a fifth, above it.

We have almost no record whatever of secular music of the time, though we do have some of the lyrics.

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14y ago
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13y ago

Music, like every other aspect of life, evolved and changed considerably during the long medieval period - just as an English peasant from a small village in 1100 would not be able to communicate with a peasant from the same village in 1500 (the English language having evolved into something still termed medieval, but very different).

In the early period, say 10th to 12th centuries, English music was generally in the form of "Plainsong", with no harmonies or countermelodies. Since music was played on simple instruments, a scale with very few or no sharps and flats was generally used.

12th century religious music was in many cases taken straight from earlier folk tunes, with new words written to fit. The early 13th century "Hymn to St Magnus" (Nobilis humilis) is one of these, based on a much older folk song. The link below takes you to a web page with details of this piece, including the original manuscript in Latin and a sound file to demonstrate the music as played and sung.

By the middle of the 13th century, French and Arabic influences on music spread across Europe, leading to harmonies and countermelodies becoming popular, with much more complex scales. This style led into the Tudor melodies such as "Greensleeves" which are almost entirely written in sharps and flats and have harmonies included.

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Q: What was music of the Early Middle Ages like?
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