Medieval

Medieval music is the music of Western Europe from roughly 500 to 1400, spanning the monophonic chant of the early Church, the troubadour and trouvere song of the courts, and the first great flowering of polyphony. Its sacred core is Gregorian chant, codified under the Carolingians, from which organum grew at Notre Dame in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries through *Perotin* and the rhythmic modes, culminating in the intricate motets and the mass of *Guillaume de Machaut*. Secular song, estampies and dances survive alongside the liturgy, and the period's notation, theory and instruments laid the foundations on which all later Western art music rests.