The Medieval period was the longest and most distant period of musical history and consists of almost a millennium's worth of music. To examine the music of this period we must first look at the influences or dominating factors of medieval life.

In a political sense, as well as a spiritual sense, the Roman Catholic Church was very much the focal point of a Medieval man's life. Between the collapse of control of the Roman Empire around 500 A.D. and the Renaissance in the middle 1400s, the Church remained the most continuously powerful organization in Europe.

The great gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages help demonstrate how religion had become the focus of the times. The thousands and thousands of hours of labour, the tremendous cost involved, the extraordinary and detailed craftsmanship without the use of cranes or power tools must give us an idea of the effects of religion and the power of the Church. To worship God through one's craft was the highest artistic ideal of the times. While some of the great secular c

Starting around the year 1000, the practice of using polyphony began to enter into Western music. Polyphony is the use of independent lines within a piece of music. This multi-layered texture gave music a new expressive intensity, almost literally giving it another dimension. Perhaps not a coincidence, the use of perspective in painting was evolving at about the same time, expressing a parallel expansion in the visual medium. The first polyphony (called 'organum') consisted of two voices moving in parallel motion. Later as harmony became a little more sophisticated, the voices began taking on a little more independence from each other.

Guido D'Arezzo, a monk who lived in the early 11th century devised a version of the staff that is the precursor of today's staff. Some of his practices also contributed to "sight-singing"--the reading of music at sight. He also started the practice of using the Latin syllables of Do, Re, Mi, Fa, etc. to symbolise pitches.

A second reason is that there really was a great deal of sacred music composed. Again, it was considered the highest form of art to be able to use one's talent to praise God. Life had become more and more dangerous and uncertain for the inhabitant of the Middle Ages. Without science to illuminate physical laws, without bacteriology to allow the understanding of diseases and plagues, fear and superstition became the method of explaining the unknown. Our earthly existence was ultimately looked upon as a dangerous, misery filled prelude to a blissful afterlife. The Church represented the hopes of the better world to come.

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)