Coro de monjes del Monasterio Benedictino de Santo Domingo de Silos

Classical music is the notated art-music tradition of Europe and its global descendants, characterized by durable forms, carefully codified harmony and counterpoint, and a literate score-based practice. The term “classical” can refer broadly to the entire Western art-music lineage from the Medieval era to today, not just the Classical period (c. 1750s–1820s). It privileges long-form structures (such as symphonies, sonatas, concertos, masses, and operas), functional or modal harmony, thematic development, and timbral nuance across ensembles ranging from solo instruments to full orchestras and choirs. Across centuries, the style evolved from chant and modal polyphony to tonal harmony, and later to post-tonal idioms, while maintaining a shared emphasis on written notation, performance practice, and craft.

Mozarabic chant (also called Old Hispanic or Visigothic chant) is a monophonic, unaccompanied liturgical repertory that served the Old Hispanic (Mozarabic) rite of Christian worship in medieval Iberia. It features free, speech‑like rhythm, modal melodic formulas, and a mix of syllabic, neumatic, and highly melismatic passages tailored to Latin liturgical prose and poetry. Its melodies were preserved in non‑staff neumes (Visigothic notation), which transmit contour and nuance but originally lacked precise pitch, making modern performance partly reconstructive. The sound is austere yet ornate, with solo cantors and a small schola alternating antiphons, psalm verses, and long responsories within a distinctive Iberian liturgical calendar and order.

Medieval music refers to the diverse sacred and secular musical practices of Europe between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the dawn of the Renaissance. It spans more than eight centuries, from early monophonic chant to the first notated polyphony. Core features include the use of church modes rather than major/minor, extensive reliance on vocal music (Latin sacred chant as well as vernacular song), and the progressive development from unmeasured chant to rhythmic modal notation and, later, mensural notation. Texture evolves from monophony (plainchant, troubadour songs) to organum, conductus, and the motet, culminating in complex isorhythmic works by the late 13th–14th centuries. Secular traditions—troubadours and trouvères in France, Minnesänger in German lands, and the Iberian Cantigas—coexisted with and influenced sacred practice. Instruments such as the vielle, harp, psaltery, recorder, shawm, hurdy-gurdy, and portative organ often doubled or accompanied voices, though much music remained purely vocal.