The early history of Western music was determined by the Christian church to an extent that is not easy for us to grasp today. The church cultivated, supported, and directed music as it did art, architecture, poetry, and learning. Composers were priests, clerics, or monks, and most musicians got their training as church choirboys. Exception must be made for popular musicians — called minstrels and jongleurs (jawn-glérs) — but we know little about their lives or their music. The only people who wrote music down were monks and other clerics, who could not have cared less about preserving popular music.

The music fostered by the church was the singing or chanting of sacred words in services, and we might pause for a moment to ask why singing was so important for Christian worship. Singing is a way of uttering words; words denote concepts, and singing words gives concepts in prayer or doctrine a special status, a step above merely speaking them. Music provides words with special emphasis, force, mystery, even magic. Throughout human history, this heightening by music has served the basic aim of religion: to bring humans into beneficial contact with unseen spirits, with deities, or with a single God.