Music in the Middle Ages Essay Example

Music in the Medieval Ages In the beginning of the Medieval Ages, a time of war and plague, music was rare. The only place music was played in the church in the form of a chant. Secular music was not popular, and there were instruments that had not been made yet. Musicians were mostly traveling performers who played in front of kings or other types of nobility. The development of music changed history. If the instruments of the past had been not invented yet, or the changes to the church were not implemented, then the mass and the music itself would not be as important to most people as it is now. In the middle ages, there are different types of musical performers and instruments. The instruments, like today’s brass, percussion, strings, and woodwinds, have unique shapes and classifications. The classifications of the musical instruments in the Middle Ages are aerophones, idiophones, memprainophones, chordophones, and monochords. The musical instruments are also classified by sound into two different types, Bas and Haut. Bas are instruments with a soft and soothing sound, for example, recorders and string instruments. A well-known example of a Bas class instrument is a lute. A lute is played in a similar fashion to a guitar. It has 12 strings that the player can strum or pluck. Another type of Bas type instrument is the harp or lyre. An image from medieval times depicts a person playing it on his knee and bowing it like a cello. The lyre is a type of chordophone, and you can play it like a cello or a guitar. The final type of Bas instrument is a recorder. The recorder is an Aerophone type instrument and it is played like a pipe or a flute, and it has a single reed.
The second type of noise class instrument is the Haut class. The Haut class is known for its loud and noisy sounds. Members of the Haut class are drums, bass and some wind instruments like horns. Some horns are made of animal horns like elephant’s horns. These horns are called Oliphants and they