Middle Ages (800–1400)

The medieval music we know best is church music: Gregorian chant, a single unaccompanied melody sung in Latin by monks. For a long time it was learned by heart. Around the 9th century neumes appeared: small signs written above the text that recall the shape of the melody without giving exact pitches.

In the 11th century the monk Guido of Arezzo suggested placing notes on horizontal lines, the ancestor of our staff. He also taught his singers to find notes with the syllables ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, taken from a Latin hymn. For the first time, a singer could read a melody they had never heard.

Little by little, voices were stacked on top of each other: this is polyphony. Around 1200 at Notre-Dame in Paris, Léonin and Pérotin wrote pieces in two, three and then four parts. In the 14th century the Ars nova brought a more precise way of writing rhythm, and Guillaume de Machaut composed one of the first complete polyphonic Masses by a single composer.

Outside the church, the troubadours (in southern France) and trouvères (in the north) sang of courtly love in everyday language, accompanied by fiddles, lutes or harps. Most of their accompaniments were never written down: today’s performers reconstruct them.