Grim's Hall

Medieval Music:

There is a line in the Cantiga 119 video, below, that states that "The use of fifths, coupled with unique phrasing, gives Medieval music its distinctive sound."

I had never thought of it before, but it is true that Medieval music has a distinctive sound. It's not just that it's "early" -- it's distinctive even among other traditional music (for example, Chinese or Japanese early music), and not just because of the use of different instruments.

The performers who recorded that version of Cantiga 119 kindly wrote back to my inquiry: "A fifth would be from C to G, that is an interval of a fifth. CDEFG,
see? or D to A DEFGA.... After medieval times, they weren't used much. And
Bach almost never used parallel fifths, which would be like D & A to
E & B."

Perhaps our resident music theorist, or others who are learned, might explain how the "fifth" works with the human brain. I'd like to know more about this than I do.