Studying the medieval music of the Middle Ages throws up lots of interesting observations and questions. In looking at one particular piece of music we asked questions like: Why did the composer choose that particular selection of notes? Why don’t we use these in today’s music? Why does the composer use a lot of perfect intervals in the music?
Looking at the choice of notes reveals that the music uses MODES, not major/minor scales
Intervals of 4ths and 5ths are considering PERFECT, symbolizing the perfection of the subject matter of the music
Whilst we can’t ask the composer these questions (they died around 900 years ago!), we can look at the social context of that time and assume the answers. However, it does throw up TOK questions – can we really know the answers to these questions? Over to Mr. Goodwin for the answer to that question…
One final point worth making is that the music of the Middle Ages provides some of the earliest examples of written musical composition. Often composition is (wrongly) seen to be dominated by male composers, but the music of the Middle Ages is dominated by the work of a single female composer, Hildegard of Bingen.