Hildegard of Bingen
1098-1179A German abbess, writer, and one of the earliest composers whose music and name we still know today. She wrote dozens of chants for her convent to sing, all flowing, soaring melodies for a single voice.
Music learns how to write itself down
For most of human history, music was never written down — it lived only in memory, passed from person to person by ear. That changed slowly during the Medieval era, as monks in European monasteries began inventing ways to write music on the page. An Italian monk named Guido of Arezzo, working around the year 1000, came up with a system of lines (an early staff) and named the notes do, re, mi, fa, sol, la — the same syllables music students still use today.
One voice becomes two: the first steps toward harmony
Almost all Medieval music that survives is monophonic, meaning a single melodic line with no harmony underneath it — think of one voice (or a whole choir singing in unison) chanting the same line together. This style is called plainchant or Gregorian chant, named after Pope Gregory I, and it was sung daily in churches and monasteries across Europe. Toward the very end of the era, composers at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris started adding a second melodic line above the chant — the first steps toward the harmony that would define every later era.
Music outside the church: troubadours and traveling musicians
Music also existed outside the church. Traveling poet-musicians called troubadours (in southern France) and trouvères (in the north) wrote and performed songs about love, adventure, and daily life, usually accompanied by simple instruments like the lute, the recorder, and a bowed string instrument called the vielle — an ancestor of the violin.