Similarities Between Sacred Music And Secular Music In The Middle Ages

1. Two categories of services that the Roman Catholic church offer are: offices, which is a series of services that is celebrated at different of the day in monasteries and convents and mass, which is a reenactment of the sacrifice of Christ. Mass is the most formal and dignified ritual of the Catholic church and is a service that is attended by public worshippers. Proper and ordinary texts were the collection of prayers that make up the Mass. Proper texts were passages that differed from day to day throughout the church year. These passages were determined on the feasts that were being honored. Because the ordinary were passages that remained the same in every mass, composers focussed their musical settings on this particular prayer, which

No, sacred music and secular music were approached in different ways. While sacred music in the Middle Ages was mostly vocal in nature with little instrumental use, while secular music were sung monophonically with improvised instrumental accompaniment. The earliest secular songs were written in Latin, which suggests that they originated in university towns. The audience of secular music were those outside a religious context. Secular songs included a focus on idealized love and the values of chivalry. These songs were performed in courts by troubadours and trouveres in France and Minnesingers in Germany, while wandering minstrels performed in cities. These composers either sang their music and poetry themselves or had other performers carry their music out. Secular music was a necessary accompaniment for dancing, banquets, and after-dinner entertainment at medieval courts and was a dominant factor in court ceremonies, tournaments and civic processions. Secular music had a much different approach than sacred music where they were sung by professional singers trained from childhood, were performed in different environments and were written for a cappella

Baroque music has elements that set it apart from other genres. For example, baroque music used basso continuo, a system that employed two instrumentalists for the accompaniment. One instrumentalist would play the bass line such as a cello or a bassoon, while the other filled the harmony on a chordal instrument, which was commonly a harpsichord, organ or lute. Baroque music was more simplistic than any other genre in that period because it was based on a single-line melody and had a less complex harmony. The major-minor tonality, a system of seven tones built on a tonic key, is the result of this. Major-minor tonality impacted the music industry by shaping the musical structure and expanding forms of instrumental music larger than had ever before been known. This led to a significant technical advanced called the equal temperament that was a system of tuning, in which every pair of adjacent notes has an identical frequency ratio. Dissonant chords were used more freely by baroque musicians for emotional intensity and color. Baroque musical style also included dramatic forte/piano contrasts and echo effects. Like in the Renaissance era, Baroque composers utilized word painting, a technique where the music reflected the literal meaning of the song. By the late seventeenth century, an entire piece or movement was usually composed of a single affection, such as joy, anger, love or fear, also known as doctrine of the affection. Exoticism soon became a distinct piece of Baroque