On the contrary, there are some wonderful medieval tunes. Many people know Sumer is icumen in for instance, listen to Douce dame jolie      if you are still in any doubt!

It does indeed, though most of our concert work nowadays is unaccompanied. Many of our recordings have tracks that include a medieval harp or lute, such as Je m'en vois / Tels a mout      and we occasionally combine with another group such as the Chilingirian String Quartet with whom we perform a meditative programme of plainchant and contemporary music by Sir John Tavener.

Medieval music - music of the Middle Ages - is generally covered by the period between 500 and 1450 (after which you are in the Renaissance.) Between 500 and 1050 most of the music which survives is plainchant, chiefly because it was not until the 11th century that a standard method of writing down music was invented. Prior to that manuscripts might include signs indicating whether a melody rose or fell, but not the precise pitch relationships between one note and the next. Polyphonic music (i.e. for more than one voice) starts to appear from around 1050.

Whereas Renaissance music will normally have quite a large range between the highest note sung by the top voice and the lowest note sung by the bottom voice, in Medieval music the further back in time you go the smaller that range. This is one reason why Gothic Voices often uses a mezzo-soprano and three tenors rather than the customary soprano, alto, tenor and bass.

An early Medieval composer would start with a single line of melody. To create polyphony (music for more than one voice), another line would be written in the same range, neither voice obviously singing either higher or the lower than the other. A third and, very occasionally, a fourth voice might be added, doing the same thing.

The development of polyphonic Medieval music between about 1050 and 1450 can be traced by watching the voices move into their distinctive ranges, so that after 1400 many pieces will have a recognizable bass part.

Sacred medieval music might have been performed in a church (especially plainchant) or in a monastery or the house of a bishop or abbot. Plainchant hymns such as the Te Deum would often be performed in the open air in procession round a church or through a town.

Secular music would have been performed by a variety of people in many different places, from the hand-picked ensembles at the court of a king or nobleman to the travelling musicians at fairs and markets.

Both sacred and secular music from the 11th or 12th century are quite similar in style, and sacred music can certainly be performed today in a concert-hall as well as a church, chapel or cathedral.

No, of course not, though as with anything, the more you know about it, the more you are able to enjoy it. The scholarship behind the programmes means that Gothic Voices concerts always offer the initiated something of interest. At the same time, there is an immediate appeal to this repertoire that will attract even the first-time listener. Once you have experienced a bit of Machaut or Dufay you will find yourself coming back again and again.

We do our utmost as performers to make our audience feel at home with medieval music, which might at first hearing seem slightly strange and unfamiliar. Our programmes offer a variety of textures and timbres by using different numbers and combinations of voices. In English speaking countries we introduce groups of pieces to the audience, illustrating characteristic medieval forms of composition - perhaps by building up the voices of a motet such as Plus bele que flors / Quant revient      - and alerting them to any unusual features that might otherwise be missed - the rondeau Plaindre m'estuet by Hugo de Lantins, for example, appears to be a conventional love song, but when the text is laid out correctly, the initial letter of each line spells out the acrostic “Putain de merde!”