Medieval Period
600 - 1400
What was life like?
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The Medieval Period is also known as the Middle Ages and was between 600 and 1400. During the Medieval Period the life you lead depended on your social status and what kind of family you were born into. If you were royalty or wealthy you could afford to eat well, had a comparatively nice home for the times, had servants and didn't have to work very hard. But even so 35 was considered an old age.
If you were a serf or peasant, your life was pretty much surviving. You worked on the land that you were given but you had to give a lot of your time and produce to the royal person who owned your land.
The Church was also very powerful during this time. It basically controlled education, books, medicine and even music. In fact, many of the composers of the Medieval Period worked in the Church and were either priests, monks or nuns (well, one nun that we know about).
The Music
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Even music wasn't invented during the Medieval Period, music notation was. A monk named Guido D'Arezzo had the idea of writing down the sounds of a song, not just the words. By the year 1100 notation (writing musical notes) was common practice.
Music of this period was mostly religious and mostly sung. There were very strict rules about how to write music and there isn't too much variety in the type of music. Famous composers of this period are Guido D'Arezzo, Hildegard Von Bingen and Guillaume de Machaut.