What Did the Middle Ages Sound Like?

What sounds and music remind you of the Middle Ages?

Some hear the resounding echo of monastic chants, others the twinkling magic of the Harry Potter soundtrack.

Why such a wide variety? Because there are so many medieval stories. Over the last several centuries, stories and ideas about the Middle Ages have been formed and reformed through literature, music, and visual art.  

Movies with medieval themes use their soundtracks to create a specific vision of this bygone era.

Take, for example, the differences in the soundtracks and scores for the films A Knight’s Tale (2001) and The Green Knight (2021).  

The music used throughout A Knight’s Tale mixes modern music—think David Bowie and Queen—with medieval instrumental themes to convey a sense of excitement and relevance that speaks to 21st-century audiences.  

With his score, composer Carter Burwell paired orchestral music with flairs of electric guitar in pieces like “The Showdown,” to complement the general premise of the movie—that medieval jousting has its modern equivalent in stadium sports.

The score of The Green Knight takes a near-opposite approach. In preparation for scoring the film, composer Daniel Hart researched Middle English poetry and wording, attempting to capture a sense of the historical Middle Ages in the sung portions of his work. 

He then used instruments like the nyckelharpa (a medieval Swedish instrument) in songs like “Should Not a Knight Offer a Lady a Kiss in Thanks,” and “Hold Very Still” to make them sound even more authentic.

In Disney’s Robin Hood (1973), the folk-style songs, like “Oo-Ee-Lally” and “Phony King of England,” are used as storytelling tools to help further the narrative of the movie.

In another Disney film, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), the lyrics of the music enhance the narrative, but the melodies and instrumentals in songs like “The Bells of Notre Dame” pair with the striking visuals to create a sense of awe and grandeur around medieval Notre-Dame’s famous architecture, bells, and stained glass.

Scores for films like Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and The Hobbit series—created by famous composers such as John Williams, Patrick Doyle, Nicholas Hooper, Alexandre Desplat, and Howard Shore—use a large number of instruments to create the magical, fictional worlds they accompany.  

John Williams used a combination of traditional brass, wind, and percussion instruments to convey the idea of magic into sound in songs like “Diagon Alley and the Gringotts Vault” and “Harry’s Wondrous World.”