Medieval Music Overview

Please begin your reading on the music of the Middle Ages with this web summary of some of the most important developments of this period. We will have more detailed reading assignments on the terms and composers discussed on this page, but this provides a good sense of the historical flow of this period of music history, which is considerably longer than most other periods.

You’ll notice that the author makes reference to a number of pieces of music in this text. While these pieces mentioned are good examples, they do not always align with our listening assignments. Be sure you focus your listening study on the pieces on the playlist for this module.