Folk Songs Society

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While medieval church chants solemnly celebrated God and the Holy Trinity, folk songs were inspired by the village year’s cycle and often accompanied by group dances and musical accompaniment.
Homemade musical instruments included bagpipes, drums, horns, and various types of flutes. Wandering minstrels called vagantes carried with them more expensive string instruments such as the psaltery, mandora, or quintern. They were responsible for spreading the playful and satirical vagantes poetry, which was composed by university students from the 13th century. These poems humorously targeted human vices and satirically commented on the sins of church prelates.
Songs were passed down orally without knowledge of their authors. Exceptionally, their collection remains in the manuscript Carmina Burana.

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