I just read a book (by Olivier Cullin) about music in the middle ages and it mostly talks about liturgical music, and then describes how (if I understood correctly) with the rise of musical notation and polyphony came the rise of court/social/noble music and also how some more popular songs and pieces were noted musically.
Now, I understand that we don't have any musical traces of early popular music, but did any contemporary ever comment on it? I've heard that there are some descriptions of Roman music that made it through the ages so that while we have no idea how it sounded musically, we have an idea of instruments played and how organised it was.
The book I read heavily emphasised on the christian/philosophical view of pre-13th century music but never how these religious chants translated into popular culture (it didn't even say if it ever did, or not). I searched the internets for answers but unfortunately my google-fu was not enough.
So the question I ask is, do we have anything on pre-neumes/pre-notation music other than religious and court music?
Thank you, and sorry if I am not clear as English is my second language.
The ballad of Eustache the Monk is probably the type of thing that you are looking for. There are quite a few surviving texts to these old Medieval ballads that you can find online. What the music sounded like is anyone's guess. I assume that you are only interested in European folk music from the wording your question. I'd recommend tracking down this book which touches on the subject:
The Outlaws of Medieval Legend, Maurice Keen, 1961, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, London
Sumer is acumin in is something that could be called popular, not court music or liturgical. But there was not quite the barrier between religious and secular at the time; religion was considered a very real and practical thing, so Dufay could write a mass using the popular song L'Homme Armé , and the religious play Mankynde had the demons singing a pretty filthy song, which would have been aimed to appeal to a popular audience. Also, "court" does not mean limited to the court. The troubadours could be called court musicians, but they had a broader popular appeal.
But there is very little on secular instrumental music that has survived. People who try to play medieval music now have to work quite a lot with iconography, looking to see what instruments are shown in old pictures, how they are used.