As soon as i get past this test today in Music Lit. which sounds like an easy enough class for a Business major with a guitar...until teste #2 which is all about the Medieval and Renaissance time periods.The medieval era lasted for about 1000 years, beginning 450 AD. This time period also is referred to as the Middle Ages or the Dark Ages. It began with the disintegration of the Roman Empire and with the rise in power and influence of the Roman Catholic church. We all know what the pious want most...for everybody to be just like them...
To this end, the church did away with musical instruments (due to their use previously in pagan rituals) and gave us the wonderful, unaccompanied liturgical chant. For over 1000 years the official music of the Roman Catholic Church has been Gregorian Chant- named for Pope Gregory I (the Great) who reigned 590-604.The chant basically consists of melody set to sacred Latin texts. Their texture is monophonic, which is as bad as it sounds and even worse to study but i'd better toil on...on to the Renaissance, humanism, the Enlightenment, the Beatles(a little later). Oh, the earliest found manuscripts depicting musical notation date to c.900AD. These manuscripts did not show any sense of rhythm or beat b/c exact time values were not notated. Study time!
I know the church banned augmented 4th chords, so the peasants started playing powerchord choruses to 4/4 beats on their electric-lute-ocasters.
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