Adam De La Halle And Ars Antiqua Time Period :: essays research papers

Adam De La Halle and Ars Antiqua Time PeriodLife SummaryAdam de la Halle is a good deal referred to as the greatest of the long succession ofpost Medieval musicians. He was a poet, musician and innovator of the earliestFrench theater. He became famous for his practise of polyphony and his theatricalproductions. Adam to begin with trained for the clergy (the people of the church).Marriage interfered with his musical career but with the help of some noblebenefactors he was subject to pursue musical studies at the University of Paris.The remainder of his life was spent in service of noble patrons.His MusicAdam de la Halle was of French origins. All of his lyrics were pen in French.Much of his early music was monophonic which shortly after became homophonic andthen transformed into polyphonic. Much of his polyphonic work was set for 3voices or instruments. If a piece of music is monophonic, then it has only amelody line and no harmony. Much of the medieval music was monophonic. If t hemusic is homophonic then there is only one melody line, but it may be played bytwo or more instruments. Many of the songs that were originally monophonic wereeasily transformed into homophonic by add extra voices or instruments.Polyphonic is the type of music we hear today. Polyphonic is when there is amelody line accompanied by harmony. A considerable amount of Adam de la Hallespolyphonic work was designed for plays. One of Adams manuscripts contains theoldest known beingness of the sharp sign. In 1872 his music was officiallypublished.Ars Antiqua Time PeriodArs Antiqua is Medieval Latin for "ancient art". Ars Antiqua was the period ofmusical activity in thirteenth century France. The music was characterized by theincreasing sophistication of counterpoint (the art of combining simultaneousvoice parts). Modern music historians classify the whole thirteenth century as ArsAntiqua where as older historians classified only the later half of the 13thcentury as Ars Antiqua. Thi s was the time period when music started to bringmore formal. In this time period, musical plays were just becoming popular andin 1283 one of the first operas was performed.Most of the music of the Ars Antiqua time period is anonymous. 2 importantfigures stand out among the anonymity. Protin, who became famous in the late12th century, composed the earliest known music for four voices. Franco ofCologne, who flourished in the center field of the 13th century, was a theorist whoorganized a new, more precise system of rhythmic notation, the direct ancestor