Impact of Medieval Secular Music Performance on the Modern World

Impact of Medieval Secular Music Performance on the Modern World
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1.1 Research Question
The evolution of Western music throughout the medieval period went through many phases. Monophonic singing, which consists of a single unison melodic line, has been popular since the Middle Ages (Arnold, 2016). Somber religious chants, known as plainchant or plainsong, dominated the early Medieval era in civilizations ranging from Rome to Spain to Ireland. By the 9th and 10th centuries, monophonic chants like the Gregorian chant had spread across Western Europe, and the Catholic Church had standardized vocal music to suit the Gregorian chant paradigm. Plainchant experienced little musical growth as it grew more popular. By the thirteenth century, motets had become very popular, and they were the first genuine polyphony of the Middle Ages. The motet would live on long beyond the Middle Ages. Renaissance artists wrote motets like Guillaume Dufay and Baroque composers like J.S. Bach for their respective periods.
Twycross & Carpenter (2017) indicate that late in the Middle Ages, a style known as Ars Nova completely embraced polyphonic music while rejecting the rhythmic patterns that had previously restricted Medieval music. Ars Nova, pioneered in France by the theorist Philippe de Vitry, would pave the way for the Renaissance music that characterized the fifteenth century. It made the chanson, a kind of polyphonic choral music with poetry, popular. According to Stoessel (2019), Troubadours and trouvères played some of the most famous secular music of the Middle Ages. Troubadours traveled with string instruments like lutes, dulcimers, vielles, psalteries, and hurdy-gurdies to accompany their singing. During the twelfth century, troubadours were very popular. Trouvères were a kind of poet-musician who was usually associated with the aristocracy. Although vocal music makes up the majority of the medieval canon, instrumental music was also produced using various instruments. Woodwind instruments such as the flute, pan flute, and recorder were among them, as were string instruments such as the lute, dulcimer, psaltery, and zither, and brass instruments such as the sackbut.The following research questions guide the study;
* What effect of medieval music performances have on modern society?
* What is the nature of medieval music performances in modern society?
* What are the different forms of medieval music?
* What are the factors influencing the performance of medieval music in modern society?
1.2 Rationale
Medieval music has undergone evaluation and consequently influenced several changes in modern society. Medieval music encompasses the different forms of religious and secular music. However, medieval music also had links to some pagan rituals associated with music and dance, such as Maypole dancing. Many instruments used to perform medieval music still exist in the 21stcentury but are different and typically more technologically developed forms. The different instruments used in the performance of medieval music are still in existence in the 21stcentury but appear in a more technologically advanced form. The nature of medieval music performance and its influence in the Middle Ages, particularly music education, has received limited attention. This study explores medieval secular music performance and its impact on the modern world.The study will also assess the effect of medieval music performances on the modern society, assess the nature of medieval music performances in the modern society, assess the different forms of medieval music, and explore the factors influencing the performance of medieval music in modern society.
The study will yield results about the nature of medieval music performance and its influence in the middle ages, particularly music education. The study is also expected to yield results on the different forms of medieval music and how they were embraced in the middle ages, especially during festivals or other music activities. The study findings will contribute to the existing knowledge about the Middle Ages’ music performances and their impact on modern society. The findings will also act as a point of reference for future Ph.D. studies conducted in the area of Art and music, most especially medieval music performances.
2.0 Literature Review
2.1 Overview of medieval music
Brown (2013) indicates that around the Roman empire’s collapse in 476 AD, the Medieval era of music history started. It began in the sixth century and continued until the fourteenth century when Renaissance music took its place. The church was the focal point of medieval music. Although secular music existed throughout the Middle Ages, most surviving Medieval works were liturgical music (Leech-Wilkinson, 2002). Music in the Middle Ages was both religious and secular. The liturgical genre, primarily Gregorian chant, was monophonic throughout the early medieval era. Polyphonic genres emerged in the late Middle Ages and were popular in the late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries. The foundations for the notational and theoretical techniques that would mold western music into today were established throughout the Medieval era. The creation of a complete notational system is the most apparent of them; nevertheless, theoretical advancements, especially in rhythm and polyphony, are as essential to the evolution of western music (Leech-Wilkinson, 2002).
2.2 Medieval music performance 
Although music performance is a universal human activity, musicologists and performer-scholars have only recently started to grapple with related problems, such as describing the “magic” of great performance (Karlsen, 2007). Since the 1970s, a linguistic speech-act theory concept known as ‘performativity’ has gained traction in theatre and literary studies, as well as a few other fields, but the term ‘music performativity’ has been slow to gain traction among musicians and music scholars, even among those who write about ‘music performance. Medieval music notation may be deceiving for a contemporary performer, and Accidentals were often deleted since they were assumed to be understood. Furthermore, it seems that medieval performance included variety, ornamentation, and improvisation (Stoessel, 2019).
2.3 Secular music in the medieval times
For the majority of the Middle Ages, art had a religious purpose. Liturgical music with Latin lyric...