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However, many secular songs were sung in the vernacular language, unlike the sacred songs that followed the Latin language of the Church. These earliest types were known as the chanson de geste (song of deeds) and were popular amongst the traveling jongleurs and minstrels of the time.
Secular motets, known as "ceremonial motets", [17] typically set a Latin text to praise a monarch, music or commemorate a triumph. The theme of courtly love, often found in the medieval secular motet, was banished from the Renaissance motet. Ceremonial motets are characterised by clear articulation of formal structure and by clear diction ...
A secular hymn is a type of non-religious popular song that has elements in common with religious music, especially with Christian hymns. The concept goes back at least as far as 17 BCE when the Roman emperor Augustus commissioned the Roman poet Horace to write lyrics by that title ("Carmen Saeculare" in Latin).
Medieval music encompasses the sacred and secular music of Western Europe during the Middle Ages, [1] from approximately the 6th to 15th centuries. It is the first and longest major era of Western classical music and is followed by the Renaissance music; the two eras comprise what musicologists generally term as early music, preceding the common practice period.
During the Middle Ages, secular or semi-secular sequences, such as Peter of Blois' Olim sudor Herculis [3] [4] ("The labours of Hercules") were written; the Goliards, a group of Latin poets who wrote mostly satirical verse, used the form extensively. The Carmina Burana is a collection of these sequences.
The Secular Ode of Horace, for instance, was commissioned by Augustus and performed by a mixed children's choir at the Secular Games in 17 BC. Music was customary at funerals, and the tibia (Greek aulos), a woodwind instrument, was played at sacrifices to ward off ill influences
Plainsong was the exclusive form of the Western Christian church music until the ninth century, and the introduction of polyphony. [ 2 ] The monophonic chants of plainsong have a non-metric rhythm, [ 3 ] which is generally considered freer than the metered rhythms of later Western music. [ 3 ]
The practice of keeping a slow moving "tenor" line continued into secular music, and the words of the original chant survived in some cases as well. One of the most common genres in the Magnus Liber is the clausula , which are "sections where, in discant style, the tenor uses rhythmic patterns as well as the upper part". [ 5 ]