Rise of medieval music

Medieval music covers the Western music of the Middle Ages, from the fall of Rome to the fifteenth century. Its oldest surviving repertoire is plainchant, the unaccompanied sacred singing of the Christian church, later associated with Pope Gregory the Great. Over time, monks developed ways of writing down melodies, including staff notation attributed to Guido of Arezzo, and singers began to add second voices, giving rise to polyphony, as at Notre-Dame in Paris. Secular songs by troubadours and trouveres flourished in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the fourteenth century the Ars Nova brought new rhythmic complexity.

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