Goliards
The Goliards were itinerant poet-musicians of Europe
from the tenth to the middle of the thirteenth
century, hence overlapped with the troubador and
trouvère tradition. Most were scholars or
ecclesiastics, and they wrote and sang in Latin,
unlike the troubadors, trouvères, and minnesingers,
who used the vernacular. Although many of the poems
have survived, very little of the music has. They
were possibly influential--even decisively so--on
the troubador-trouvère tradition. Most of their
poetry is secular, and while some of the songs
celebrate religious ideals, others are frankly
profane, dealing with drunkenness, debauchery and
lechery.
Minnesang
The minnesinger tradition was the Germanic
counterpart to the activity of the troubadors and
trouvères to the west. Unfortunately, few sources
survive from the time; the sources of minnesang are
mostly from two or three centuries after the peak of
the movement, leading to some controversy over their
accuracy.
Geisslerlieder
The geisslerlieder were the songs of wandering bands
of flagellants, who sought to appease the wrath of
an angry God by penitential music accompanied by
mortification of their bodies. There were two
separate periods of activity of geisslerlied: one
around the middle of the thirteenth century, from
which, unfortunately, no music survives (although
numerous lyrics do); and another from 1349, for
which both words and music survive miraculously
intact due to the attention of a single priest who
wrote about the movement and recorded its music.
This second period corresponds to the spread of the
Black Death in Europe, and documents one of the most
terrible events in European history. Both periods of
geisslerlied activity were mainly in Germany.
Troubadors and trouvères
The music of the troubadors and trouvères was a
vernacular tradition of monophonic secular song,
probably accompanied by instruments, sung by
professional, occasionally itinerant, musicians who
were as skilled as poets as they were singers and
instrumentalists. The language of the troubadors was
Occitan (also known as the langue d'oc, or
Provençal); the language of the trouvères was Old
French (also known as langue d'oil). The period of
the troubadors corresponded to the flowering of
cultural life in Provence which lasted through the
twelfth century and into the first decade of the
thirteenth. Typical subjects of troubador song were
war, chivalry and courtly love. The period of the
troubadors ended abruptly with the Albigensian
Crusade, the fierce campaign by Pope Innocent III to
eliminate the Albigensian heresy (and appropriate
the wealth of a defenseless people) which
effectively exterminated the entire civilization.
Surviving troubadors went either to Spain, northern
Italy or northern France (where the trouvère
tradition lived on), where their skills and
techniques contributed to the later developments of
secular musical culture in those places.
The music of the trouvères was similar to that of
the troubadors, but was able to survive into the
thirteenth century unaffected by the war of
extermination against the Albigenses. Most of the
more than two thousand surviving trouvère songs
include music, and show a sophistication as great as
that of the poetry it accompanies.
Liturgical drama
Yet another musical tradition of Europe during the
middle ages was the liturgical drama. Quite possibly
this was the oldest of all, since in its original
form it may represent a survival of Roman drama with
Christian stories--mainly the Gospel, the Passion,
and the lives of the saints--grafted on. Every part
of Europe had some sort of tradition of musical or
semi-musical drama in the middle ages, involving
acting, speaking, singing and instrumental
accompaniment in some combination. Probably they
were performed by traveling actors and musicians,
and the musical elements may be the closest
surviving relatives of the lost popular music of the
period. Many have been preserved sufficiently
complete to allow modern reconstruction and
performance (for example the Play of Daniel, which
has been recently recorded).
