Library: Music by Credo Reference: Traditional

Terms

Ballad: Topic Page
The anonymous folk ballad (or popular ballad), was composed to be sung. It was passed along orally from singer to singer, from generation to generation, and from one region to another.
Byzantine Chant: Topic Page
The name given to the Christian chant of the Greek-speaking Orthodox Church.
Hymn: Topic Page
Song of praise, devotion, or thanksgiving, especially of a religious character.
Motet: Topic Page
Name for the outstanding type of musical composition of the 13th cent. and for a different type that originated in the Renaissance.
Plainsong: Topic Page
Or plainchant, the unharmonized chant of the medieval Christian liturgies in Europe and the Middle East; usually synonymous with Gregorian chant, the liturgical music of the Roman Catholic Church.
Rondeau: Topic Page
French medieval lyric poem form of 10 or 13 lines with only two rhymes throughout, and with the opening words used twice as a refrain.
Troubadour: Topic Page
Poet-musician of Provence and southern France in the 12th-13th centuries. The troubadours originated a type of lyric poetry devoted to themes of courtly love and the idealization of women and to glorifying the chivalric ideals of the period.

Chivalry: Topic Page
In the Middle Ages, chivalry was a synonym of knighthood, describing either the reality of being a knight or the virtues associated with idealized portrayals of knights in medieval literature and culture.
Christianity: Topic Page
Together with Judaism and Islam, Christianity belongs to the scriptural religions ( Monotheism), whose common origin is in the Near East.
Courtly Love
In The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
A literary and social construct of the Middle Ages that originated in the poetry of the troubadours in southern France in the late 11th c.
Faust: Topic Page
Legendary magician who sold his soul to the devil. The historical Georg (or Johann) Faust appears to have been a wandering scholar and conjurer in Germany at the start of the 16th century.

Carnival: Topic Page
Communal celebration, especially the religious celebration in Catholic countries that takes place just before Lent.
Ritual: Topic Page
In religious devotion or service, the practice of certain set formulas that either mark a particular important event in a person's life - such as birth rituals or death rituals - or form a patterned daily, weekly, or annual cycle.
Worship: Topic Page
Adoration and service of God or gods. This service involves reverence, awe, and wonder, and may take many different forms.