repertory of the lower classes. Aristocrats did play these instruments, and their servant
entertainers, the minstrels and jongleurs, were also expected to be proficient at several of
them.
Beginning in the early 15th century, musical instruments and their playing techniques
experienced an important change. As polyphonic music grew in popularity among the
noble classes, courtly music required instruments that could play single lines (that is,
without drones) and had fairly large ranges that included chromatics. Instruments like
bagpipe, hurdy-gurdy, and the flat-bridged fiddle that played drones, and those with a
limited range incapable of the new repertory, were less favored by the upper classes and
ultimately became associated with the common folk. Some instruments adapted to the
new requirements. For example, playing technique for the lute changed from plectrum to
fingers in order to facilitate the execution of multiple lines and chords. Other instruments
that could easily accommodate this new repertory and especially those that could play
multiple lines, such as organ and clavichord, grew in popularity, and new instruments
with larger ranges, such as the violin and viol, were developed.
Timothy J.McGee
[See also: ALTA CAPELLA; BELLS; DANCE; ICONOGRAPHY OF MUSIC;
JONGLEUR; MUSICAL PERFORMANCE PRACTICE]
Aubrey, Elizabeth. “References to Music in Old Occitan Literature.” Acta musicologica
61(1989):110–49.
Bowles, Edmund. “Haut and Bas: The Grouping of Musical Instruments in the Middle Ages.”
Musica disciplina 7(1954): 115–40.
Brown, Howard M. “Instruments.” In Performance Practice: Music Before 1600, ed. Howard
M.Brown and Stanley Sadie. New York: Norton, 1989, pp. 15–36.
McGee, Timothy J. Medieval and Renaissance Music: A Performer’s Guide. Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1985.
Montagu, Jeremy. The World of Medieval and Renaissance Musical Instruments. Newton Abbot:
David and Charles, 1976.
Page, Christopher. The Owl and the Nightingale: Musical Life and Ideas in France 1100–1300.
London: Dent, 1989.
——. Voices and Instruments of the Middle Ages. London: Dent, 1987.
Remnant, Mary. Musical Instruments of the West. London: Batsford, 1978.
MUSICAL NOTATION (NEUMATIC)
. The notation used for Gregorian chant and early polyphonic music beginning in the 8th
or 9th centuries. The term is derived from the Latin word neuma, which referred at first to
a short melodic unit but came to be applied to the notational symbols expressing it. In its
earlier stages, neumatic notation did not indicate exact pitches but only the number of
notes and their relative upward and downward movement. A single note of higher pitch,
for example, the virga, might take the shape of a slanted stroke like a somewhat
lengthened acute accent; a lower single note, the punctum, might be written as a dot. A
group of two ascending notes, the podatus (or pes), could be written as a longer stroke
than the virga, commencing with a hook or a shorter horizontal stroke (the style of
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