Medieval Music Exam Review some ideas that come to

my mind (not an exhaustive list)

What we have focused on in class:

SHMRG
Plainchant and role in church; church role in medieval society
Music as a liberal art
Plainchant as oral tradition
Items of the mass
Stages of notation
Performance styles of chant
Text setting of chant
Modes!
Troubadors and their songs
Structure
Topics
Performance practice versus written artifact
The sound of sacred music versus secular music and supporting evidence
Role of professional musician
Why change chant?
Scholasticism
The stages of organum, its place in the structure of a plainchant and in the
mass
Comparison of polyphony with structures in society (churches, social
structures, church hierarchy, etc.)
Viderunt Omnes path to organum, substitute clausula, and motet
How organum evolves into the motet
Advances in notation associated with organum
Aquitanian polyphony
Notre Dame Polyphony
Aesthetics of polyphony pure intervals, cadences, rhythmic patterns in 3subdivision, repetition of motives
The prevalence of oral composition and oral tradition
Stages of the motet and the stages of notation that accompany them
English sound
Ars Nova versus Ars Antiqua; Ars subtilior, Italian Trecento
Formes fixes
It goes without saying that you should recognize the names and know the
importance of major composers, compositions, treatises, places, etc.

What I have skipped in class (but still important):

Tropes and sequences

Items of the office and the office chants
Other important parts of theory (e.g. Guidonian hand, species, etc.)
Other secular songs
Dances (Estampie, etc.)
Specifics on medieval instruments
Versus and Conductus
Whatever is skipped during week 4

Suggestions for class review:

Timelines create one big timeline in the review session that

includes major treatises, composers, events, stages of notation,
compositions, places of focus (e.g. Notre Dame), etc. thus
synthesizing the information from chapters 2-5 (roughly concurrent)
and adding the 14th century at the end.
Listening and identifying the style characteristics (through SHMRG)
that lead to style, time period, place, composer, context