Medieval and Polyphonic Music

Until the 20^th century, there was a general perception that the history of music began with Bach. Only with the huge growth in musical research and scholarship, together with the explosion of the “early music movements” in the later decades of the 20th century, did many lost masterpieces of the medieval and Renaissance periods come to lights, prompting a re-evaluation of their composers’ achievements.

Sacred music

Music in the Middle Ages was largely the preserve of the church.
Surviving medieval sources were mostly produced by monastic scribes, and kept in monastery libraries. While secular music existed, much of it was improvised, so the earliest music to survive was generally intended for sacred use.
The names of individual composers become scarcer the further back into history we travel.
Among the earliest musicians who may be singled out from the 12th and early 13th centuries are the French composers Leonin and Perotin, who were associated with the newly built cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris. A spate of enormously popular recordings had recently revealed the visionary music of the 12th-century nun Hildegard of Bingen, who not only has the distinction of being one of the earliest known composers, but was also a woman working in a field where women have traditionally not been prominent. She is now something of a feminist icon.
Performances and recordings by early music groups have also uncovered a wealth of music by unnamed composers derived from medieval manuscript sources, such as the 13-th century Spanish Cantigas of Alfonso X.

Polyphony

The French composer Guillaume de Machaut was the single most important musical figure of the 14 th century. His many innovations included being the first to compose a complete setting of the Ordinary of the Mass, the first to write music in four parts (which became the standard polyphonic combination), and one of the first to set the typical secular poetic forms of his day: ballade, rondeau and virelay.
For the next century, the musical centres of gravity remained the courts and churches of northern France and Flanders, which produced the sacred and secular works of the Flemish composers associated with the court of the dukes of Burgundy: Dufay, Ockeghem, Josquin des Prez and their contemporaries. However, many drew inspiration from prolonged visits to Italy, where musical activity flourished at important courts such as those of Ferrara and Mantua.

English Madrigal School

The madrigal, a setting of a (usually secular) text for several voices – developed in Italy towards the end of the 13th century, but flowered some 300 years later in the hands of both Flemish and Italian composers, including Gesualdo and Luca Marenzio (1558-99). During the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603) this immensely popular form was imported to England by Italian composers working at the English court. The publication in 1588 of the Italian collection Musica transalpine inspired native composers to follow the Italian example.

Source: The Great Composers by Wendy Thompson