Early music

Early music is European classical music before the classical music era and after Ancient music. The common range given is from the end of Ancient music to the beginning of the Baroque era in about 1600, and so roughly corresponds with the European Middle Ages period.

Notation and performance

According to Margaret Bent (1998), Early music notation, "is under-prescriptive by our standards; when translated into modern form it acquires a prescriptive weight that overspecifies and distorts its original openness." Before about 1600, written music did not consistently state which instruments are used when. A century earlier, people who wrote down music did not always specify whether lines of polyphony were to be sung or played on an instrument. Similarly, the notation frequently does not indicate what key to play the music in, if any. Accidentals were not necessary. Notations for rhythm go back only to about 1200. There is thus a speculative element to all modern performances of Medieval and Renaissance music. However, Renaissance musicians would have been highly trained in dyadic counterpoint and thus possessed this and other information necessary to read a score, "what modern notation requires would then have been perfectly apparent without notation to a singer versed in counterpoint." See the article on Renaissance music.

Related Topics:
Music notation - Polyphony - Dyadic counterpoint - Renaissance music

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