medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the Post-classical, post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with t ...

and early

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

polyphonic Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice, monophony, or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords, h ...

music, gymel (also gimel or gemell) is the technique of temporarily dividing up one voice part, usually an upper one, into two parts of equal range, but singing different music. Often the two voices sing a passage of intricate polyphony, beginning and finally converging on a

unison In music, unison is two or more musical parts that sound either the same pitch or pitches separated by intervals of one or more octaves, usually at the same time. ''Rhythmic unison'' is another term for homorhythm. Definition Unison or per ...

, and often, but not always, the other voices drop out for a time. While the earliest use of gymel seems to have been around the mid-14th century, the earliest notated gymels survive from approximately 1430. It is probable that some earlier notated examples have been lost, since the vast majority of English manuscript sources from before the 1530s were destroyed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries by

Henry VIII Henry VIII (28 June 149128 January 1547) was King of England from 22 April 1509 until his death in 1547. Henry is best known for his six marriages, and for his efforts to have his first marriage (to Catherine of Aragon) annulled. His disa ...

. Indeed, the earliest surviving notated examples are from continental sources. The significance of the development of gymel is three-fold. First, that a single voice part could be split into two indicates that the music of the time was being sung with multiple voices on a part, as opposed to the practice of secular polyphony at the time, in which there was only one voice on a part. Second, considerable virtuosity is required for many of the surviving examples of gymel, indicating a rise in the singing standards in England in the 14th and 15th centuries. Third, the use of gymel shows that composers were becoming aware of the importance of textural contrast as a structural device; this is one of the critical distinctions between medieval and Renaissance music, a distinction which would carry forward to the present day. It also seems that many times gymel was

improvised Improvisation is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. Improvisation in the performing arts is a very spontaneous performance without specific or scripted preparation. The skills of impr ...

by skilled singers. An anonymous treatise of around 1450, known as the ''Pseudo-Chilston'', includes the instruction: "And alwey beginne and ende thi Countertenor in a 5 he interval of a fifth And thi Countergemel begynne and ende in unisoun." (1) That the singers would be given instruction on which ''intervals'' to use to begin and end indicates that they were not reading from written music, but improvising. Composers of gymel include

John Dunstaple John Dunstaple (or Dunstable, – 24 December 1453) was an English composer whose music helped inaugurate the transition from the Medieval music, medieval to the Renaissance music, Renaissance periods. The central proponent of the ''Contenance ...

William Cornysh William Cornysh the Younger (also spelled Cornyshe or Cornish) (1465 – October 1523) was an English composer, dramatist, actor, and poet. Life In his only surviving poem, which was written in Fleet Prison, he claims that he has been conv ...

Richard Davy Richard Davy (c. 1465–1507) was a Renaissance composer, organist and choirmaster, one of the most represented in the Eton Choirbook. Biography Little is known about the life of Richard Davy. His name was a common one in Devon and he may have ...

, John Browne, and (much later) both

Thomas Tallis Thomas Tallis (23 November 1585; also Tallys or Talles) was an English composer of High Renaissance music. His compositions are primarily vocal, and he occupies a primary place in anthologies of English choral music. Tallis is considered one o ...

and Robert Parsons, as well as the numerous named and anonymous composers in sources such as the

Eton Choirbook The Eton Choirbook (Eton College MS. 178) is a richly illuminated manuscript collection of England, English sacred music composed during the late 15th century. It was one of very few collections of Latin liturgical music to survive the English R ...

and the

Caius Choirbook The Caius Choirbook is an illuminated choirbook dating to the early sixteenth century and containing music by Tudor-period composers. The book appears to originate from Arundel in Sussex, and to have been created sometime in the late 1520s; the ...

, among the few collections of English music to survive from the 15th century.

References and further reading

Ernest H. Sanders Ernest Helmut Sanders (4 December 1918 – 13 January 2018) was a German-born American musicologist. Born Ernst Helmut Salomon in Hamburg to banker Paul Salomon and his wife on 4 December 1918, Sanders was educated at the Gelehrtenschule des Johan ...

: "Gymel", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed January 16, 2005)
Grove Music Online
* Richard H. Hoppin, ''Medieval Music''. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1978. * ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. *

Gustave Reese Gustave Reese ( ; 29 November 1899 – 7 September 1977) was an American musicologist and teacher. Reese is known mainly for his work on medieval and Renaissance music, particularly with his two publications ''Music in the Middle Ages'' (1940) ...

, ''Music in the Renaissance''. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. {{ISBN, 0-393-09530-4 * (1)

Manfred Bukofzer Manfred Fritz Bukofzer (27 March 1910 – 7 December 1955) was a German-born American musicologist. Life and career He studied at Heidelberg University and the Stern conservatory in Berlin, but left Germany in 1933 for Switzerland, where he obt ...

, ''Geschichte des englischen Diskants und des Fauxbourdons nach den theoretischen Quellen''. Strasbourg, 1936. (While the book is in German, the quotations are in late middle to early modern English.) Musical techniques Renaissance music Medieval music theory

See also

References and further reading