The estampie is a medieval dance and musical form which was a popular instrumental and vocal form in the 13th and 14th centuries. The name was also applied to poetry.
Sources for an understanding of dance in Europe in the Middle Ages are limited and fragmentary, being composed of some interesting depictions in paintings and illuminations, a few musical examples of what may be dances, and scattered allusions in literary texts. The first detailed descriptions of dancing only date from 1451 in Italy, which is after the start of the Renaissance in Western Europe.
Medieval music encompasses the sacred and secular music of Western Europe during the Middle Ages, 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. Following the traditional division of the Middle Ages, medieval music can be divided into Early (500–1000), High (1000–1300), and Late (1300–1400) medieval music.
Johannes Ciconia was an important Flemish composer and music theorist of trecento music during the late Medieval era. He was born in Liège, but worked most of his adult life in Italy, particularly in the service of the papal chapels in Rome and later and most importantly at Padua Cathedral.
Marchetto da Padova was an Italian music theorist and composer of the late medieval era. His innovations in notation of time-values were fundamental to the music of the Italian ars nova, as was his work on defining the modes and refining tuning. In addition, he was the first music theorist to discuss chromaticism.
The Squarcialupi Codex is an illuminated manuscript compiled in Florence in the early 15th century. It is the single largest primary source of music of the 14th-century Italian Trecento.
Paolo da Firenze was an Italian composer and music theorist of the late 14th and early 15th centuries, the transition from the musical Medieval era to the Renaissance. More surviving music of the Trecento is attributable to Paolo than to any other composer except for Francesco Landini.
The Rossi Codex is a music manuscript collection of the 14th century. The manuscript is presently divided into two sections, one in the Vatican Library and another, smaller section in the Northern Italian town of Ostiglia. The codex contains 37 secular works including madrigals, cacce and, uniquely among trecento sources, monophonic ballatas. The codex is of great interest for trecento musicologists because for many years it was considered the earliest source of fourteenth-century Italian music. Although other pre-1380 sources of secular, polyphonic, Italian music have now been identified, none are nearly so extensive as the Rossi Codex.
The Trecento was a period of vigorous activity in Italy in the arts, including painting, architecture, literature, and music. The music of the Trecento paralleled the achievements in the other arts in many ways, for example, in pioneering new forms of expression, especially in secular song in the vernacular language, Italian. In these regards, the music of the Trecento may seem more to be a Renaissance phenomenon; however, the predominant musical language was more closely related to that of the late Middle Ages, and musicologists generally classify the Trecento as the end of the medieval era. Trecento means "three hundred" in Italian but is usually used to refer to the 1300s. However, the greatest flowering of music in the Trecento happened late in the century, and the period is usually extended to include music up to around 1420.
Antonio "Zacara" da Teramo was an Italian composer, singer, and papal secretary of the late Trecento and early 15th century. He was one of the most active Italian composers around 1400, and his style bridged the periods of the Trecento, ars subtilior, and beginnings of the musical Renaissance.
The Codex Las Huelgas is a music manuscript or codex from c. 1300 which originated in and has remained in the Cistercian convent of Santa María la Real de Las Huelgas in Burgos, in northern Spain. The convent was a wealthy one which had connections with the royal family of Castile.
Intabulation, from the Italian word intavolatura, refers to an arrangement of a vocal or ensemble piece for keyboard, lute, or other plucked string instrument, written in tablature.
The Montpellier Codex is an important source of 13th-century French polyphony. The Codex contains 336 polyphonic works probably composed c. 1250–1300, and was likely compiled c. 1300. It is believed to originate from Paris. It was discovered by musicologist Edmond de Coussemaker in c. 1852.
The Chantilly Codex is a manuscript of medieval music containing pieces from the style known as the Ars subtilior. It is held in the museum at the Château de Chantilly in Chantilly, Oise.
The Bamberg Codex is a manuscript containing two treatises on music theory and a large body of 13th-century French polyphony.
The Ivrea Codex is a parchment manuscript containing a significant body of 14th century French polyphonic music.
The Modena Codex is an early fifteenth-century Italian manuscript of medieval music. The manuscript is one of the most important sources of the ars subtilior style of music. It is held in the Biblioteca Estense library in Modena.
Add MS 29987 is a mediaeval Tuscan musical manuscript dating from the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century, held in the British Library in London. It contains a number of polyphonic Italian Trecento madrigals, ballate, sacred mass movements, and motets, and 15 untexted monophonic instrumental dances, which are among the earliest purely instrumental pieces in the Western musical tradition. The manuscript apparently belonged to the de' Medici family in the fifteenth century, and by 1670 was in the possession of Carlo di Tommaso Strozzi; it was in the British Museum from 1876, where it was catalogued as item 29987 of the Additional manuscripts series. It is now in the British Library.
The Manuscrit du Roi or Chansonnier du Roi is a prominent songbook compiled towards the middle of the thirteenth century, probably between 1255 and 1260 and a major testimony of European medieval music. It is currently French manuscript no.844 of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. It is known by various sigla, depending on which of its contents are the focus of study: it is troubadour manuscript W, trouvère manuscript M, and motet manuscript R. It was first published by French musicologist Pierre Aubry in 1907.
Music in Medieval England, from the end of Roman rule in the fifth century until the Reformation in the sixteenth century, was a diverse and rich culture, including sacred and secular music and ranging from the popular to the elite.
