Music for being medieval to

homeblogmastodonthingiverse



# Medieval Songbook >>
# Playford's English Dancing Master >>
# Thoinot Arbeau
# Old Measures
# 15th century Italian saltarello and quadernaria
# 15th century Italian dance (old)
# Tant que vivray (midi)
# Notes on Guido of Arrezo's "Micrologus" >>
# Notes on Sylvestro Ganassi's "Fontegara" >>

To save MP3 files on this page, right click and select "Save Link As..."

Medieval Songbook >>

Contains music from the Cantigas de Santa Maria and by trouvère Adam de la Halle.

Playford's English Dancing Master >>

Thoinot Arbeau

Tordion and Galliard

Arbeau says:

The tune of a tordion and that of a galliard are the same, and there is no difference between them, save that the tordion is danced close to the ground to a light, lively beat, and the galliard is danced higher off the ground to a slower, stronger beat.

I have here used the same tempo to better illustrate two different possible beat patterns for the tune Arbeau gives:

Tordion?

Galliard?

Old Measures

These are my very simple arrangements of the Old Measures. They are mostly just a few different instruments playing in unison, with some of the instruments playing simplified versions of the melody.

There is no surviving music for Madam Sosilia's alman, so I used a modern composition by Joseph Casazza. A composition, I might add, which although quite lovely caused me no end of confusion until I realized the emphasis pattern in part A is different to that in parts B and C.


The Quadran Pavan

Turkelone

The Earl of Essex Measure

Tinternell

The Old Alman

The Queens Alman

Madam Sosilia Alman

The Black Alman

Lorayne Alman

The New Alman

Brounswyke Alman

Source code, included mostly for my own documentation. If you look at it you may go blind, or at least wish you had. I used ChucK, which does physical modelling, for the sound synthesis.

15th century Italian saltarello and quadernaria

Material for a class on the saltarello and quadernaria for St. Vitus Dance Weekend 2009.

Handout (PDF)

Ferretra (modern composition to fit dance description) - Sheet music (PDF) - part 2 only - slower version - slower version of part 2 only

Voltati in Ca Rosina - slower version

However, see this blog entry on the topic.

15th century Italian dance (old)

These are the result of a (not entirely successful) attempt to algorithmically produce 4 part harmonizations of some 15th century Italian dance music.

Amoroso - MIDI - PDF (some notational problems...) - source

Anello - MIDI - PDF - source

Colonnese - MIDI - Colonnese MP3 that rocks (see also below) - PDF - source

Verçeppe - MIDI - PDF - source
String quartet version - MIDI (not period, but sounds good!)

Voltati in Ca Rosina - MIDI - PDF - source

Note: source tarballs are not very polished, and are mostly for my own reference.


Daniel Matthews sent me this more realistic synthesis of Collonnese on electric guitar.

Tant que vivray (midi)

tant.mid

tant-soprano.mid

tant-alto.mid

tant-tenor.mid

tant-bass.mid

tant.pdf (no words)

(now with correct bass line)

Notes on Guido of Arrezo's "Micrologus" >>

(An 11th century music theory text.)

Notes on Sylvestro Ganassi's "Fontegara" >>

(A 16th century recorder technique manual.)




[æ]