Historical Introduction 11
introduction of buttresses, which allowed the walls to be lightened. Construction materials were brick and stone and pottery, as well as materials scavenged from the Roman ruins. The
exquisite marble craftsmanship characteristic of the finest Greek and Roman buildings had been lost and these medieval brick structures seemed rough and plain compared with the
highly ornamented earlier work.
One notable exception was St. Mark’s Cathedral in Venice. It was built on the site of the basilica church, originally constructed to house the remains of St. Mark in 864. The
first church burned in 976 and was rebuilt between 1042 and 1085. It was modeled after the Church of the Apostles in Constantinople as a classic Romanesque structure in a nearly
square cruciform shape, with rounded domes reminiscent of later Russian orthodox churches. St. Mark’s, illustrated in Fig. 1.7, was later home to a series of brilliant composers including
Willaert 1480–1562, Gabrielli 1557–1612, and Monteverdi 1567–1643.
The music, which we now associate with Gregorian chant, developed as part of the worship in the eighth and ninth centuries. The organum, a chant of two parts, grew slowly
from the earlier monodic music. At first this form consisted of a melody that was sung held by a tenor tenere, to hold while another singer had the same melodic line at an interval a
forth above. True polyphony did not develop until the eleventh century.
1.4 GOTHIC PERIOD 1100–1400
Gothic Cathedrals
Beginning in the late middle ages, around 1100, there was a burst in the construction of very large churches, the Gothic cathedrals, first in northern France and later spreading throughout
Europe. These massive structures served as focal points for worship and repositories for the religious relics that, following the return of the crusaders from the holy lands, became
important centers of the valuable pilgrim trade. The cathedrals were by and large a product of the laity, who had developed from a populace that once had only observed the religious
forms, to one that held beliefs as a matter of personal conviction. Successful cities had grown prosperous with trade and during the relatively peaceful period of the late middle ages the
citizens enthusiastically supported their construction. The first was built by Abbot Suger at St. Denis near Paris between 1137 and 1144 and was made possible by the hundreds of
experiments in the building of fortified towns and churches, which had produced a skilled and knowledgeable work force. Suger was a gifted administrator and diplomat who also
had the good fortune to attend school and become best friends with the young prince who became King Louis VI. When the king left on the Second Crusade he appointed Suger
regent and left him in charge of the government. Following the success of St. Denis, other cathedrals were soon begun at Notre Dame 1163–c1250, Bourges 1192–1275, Chartes
1194–1260, and Rheims 1211–1290. These spectacular structures see Fig. 1.8 carried the art and engineering of working in stone to its highest level. The vaulted naves, over
30 meters 100 feet high, were lightened with windows and open colonnades and sup- ported from the exterior with spidery flying buttresses, which gave the inside an ethereal
beauty. Plain chant was the music of the religious orders and was suited perfectly to the cathedral. Singing was something that angels did, a way of growing closer to God. It was
part of the every day religious life, done for the participants rather than for an outside listener.
In the second half of the twelfth century the beginnings of polyphony developed in the School of Notre Dame in Paris from its antecedents in the great abbey of St. Martial in
Limoges. The transition began with the two-part organum of Leonin, and continued with the
12 Architectural Acoustics
Figure 1.7
St. Mark’s Cathedral, Venice, Italy Fletcher, 1963
three and four-part organum of his successor Perotin. The compositions were appropriate for the large reverberant cathedrals under construction. A slowly changing plainsong pedal note
was elaborated by upper voices, which did not follow the main melody note for note as before. This eventually led, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, to the polyphonic motets in
which different parts might also have differing rhythms. Progress in the development of
Historical Introduction 13
Figure 1.8
Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, France Fletcher, 1963
serious music was laborious and slow. Outside the structured confines of church music, the secular troubadours of Provence, the trouveres of northern France and southern England, the
story-telling jongleurs among the peasantry, and the minnesingers in Germany also made valuable contributions to the art.
The influence of the Church stood at its zenith in the thirteenth century. The crusades, of marginal significance militarily, had served to unite Western Europe into a single reli-
gious community. An army had pushed the Muslims nearly out of the Iberian peninsula.
14 Architectural Acoustics
Beginning in the fourteenth century, however, much of the civilized world was beset by the ravages of the bubonic plague. Between the years 1347 and 1350 it wiped out at least one
third of the population. The Church was hit harder than the general populace, losing more than half its members. Many men, largely illiterate, had lost their wives to the plague and
sought to join the religious orders. Lured by offers of money from villages that had no priest, others came to the church for financial security. Money flowed into Rome and supported a
growing bureaucracy and opulence, which ultimately led to the Reformation. This worsened a problem already confronting the religious leadership, “the danger of believing that the
institution exists for the benefit of those who conduct its affairs.” Palmer, 1961
With the rise of towns and commerce, public entertainment became more secular and less religious in its focus. Theater in the late middle ages was tolerated by the Church largely
because it had been co-opted as a religious teaching aid. Early plays, dating from the tenth century, were little more than skits based on scripture, which were performed in the streets
by troupes. These evolved, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, into the miracle and mystery plays that combined singing and spoken dialogue. The language of the early medieval
theater was Latin, which few understood. This changed in time to the local vernacular or to a combination of Latin and vernacular. The plays evolved from a strictly pedagogical
tool to one that contained more entertainment. As the miracle plays developed, they were performed in rooms that would support the dialogue and make it understandable. By 1400,
the pretext of the play remained religious, but the theater was already profane Hindley, 1965.
1.5 RENAISSANCE PERIOD 1400–1600
