Chapter 3: Polyphonic Music from Its Beginnings through the Thirteenth Century

First Section: Early Polyphony
  1. Historical Background, 1000–1200
    1. Europe's economy prospered.
    2. Crusades united the ruling families of Christian Europe.
    3. Scholars translated Greek and Arabic works into Latin.
    4. The first universities developed in Paris, Oxford, and Bologna.
    5. The Christian Church split into eastern and western factions.
    6. Developments in musical notation freed composers from a reliance on rote learning and allowed more complex music.
  2. The Earliest Polyphony
    1. Polyphony is defined as music in which separate voices sing together, not in unison or octaves but as diverging parts.
    2. Singers probably improvised polyphony long before it was first notated.
    3. Musica enchiriadis (Music Handbook)
      1. Anonymous treatise from the ninth century
      2. Describes two types of early organum
        1. Parallel motion: Duplication of a plainsong melody (vox principalis) a perfect fourth or fifth below by an organal voice (vox organalis); with duplication of either voice at the octave possible (CHWM, ex. 3.1 and 3.2)
        2. Oblique motion: The organal voice remaining on the same pitch in order to avoid tritones against the principal voice (HWM 3.3)
  3. Eleventh-Century Organum
    1. Vox organalis usually sings above the vox principalis.
    2. The two voice parts often cross.
    3. Perfect consonances (unison, octave, fourth, and fifth) continue to be favored; other intervals occur incidentally and infrequently.
    4. The Winchester Troper is the earliest known practical source (i.e., not a treatise) but its voices are notated in unheighted neumes without staff lines, so that only pieces that also occur in later manuscripts can be reconstructed.
    5. Soloists sang polyphony during parts of the Mass and Divine Office that normally would have been sung by soloists in plainchant.
    6. NAWM 13, Alleluia Justus ut palma, ca. 1100
      1. This example comes from Ad organum faciendum, a treatise on how to make organum.
      2. Polyphony is mostly note-against-note.
      3. The penultimate notes of both phrases of chant (Alleluia and et sicut cedrus) set in polyphony are embellished with melismas in the organal voice.
  4. Aquitanian Polyphony (early twelfth century)
    1. Distinguishes between two kinds of organum
    2. Florid organum (organum duplum, organum purum)
      1. Chant melody
        1. Sung in long notes
        2. Tenor: voice that sustains or holds the chant
      2. Organal voice
        1. Florid (melismatic) melody above the tenor
        2. Many notes for each note of the chant melody
      3. Rhythm not indicated by notation
    3. Discant organum: note-against-note texture
    4. Jubilemus, exultemus (CHWM, ex. 3.6)
      1. Consonances mark the ends of lines.
      2. Dissonances seem to have been used purely for variety.
  5. Notre Dame Polyphony
    1. Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris was the employer of the two earliest named composers of polyphony, Léonin and Pérotin.
    2. The rhythmic modes (see etude, p. 52, in CHWM)
      1. Six rhythmic patterns were indicated by combinations of neumes (CHWM, ex. 3.7).
      2. The patterns correspond roughly to poetic meters.
      3. The basic unit was the perfection, which could be divided into three.
  6. Léonin (fl. 1163–1190)
    1. Compiled the Magnus liber organi (Great Book of Organum)
      1. Contained organum settings of solo portions of responsorial chants for Mass and Office
      2. Only major feasts, such as Easter, used organum.
      3. Syllabic passages of chant were set as organum purum and melismatic passages were set in discant style.
      4. Later, Pérotin (fl. 1180–ca. 1238) edited the Magnus liber organi and added his own compositions.
    2. Works mixed styles and allowed for substitutions, ex. NAWM 15b
      1. First Alleluia, in organum purum, for soloists
        1. Unmeasured rhythm
        2. Improvisational style
      2. Second Alleluia, in unison, sung by choir
      3. Psalm verse, "Pascha nostrum" in organum purum and discant
        1. Organum purum for syllabic text, e.g. "Pascha no-" and "immola-"
        2. Discant organum for melismas, e.g. "nostrum" and "la-tus"
        3. Substitutions of sections of discant (clausulae) may have been composed by later composers.
  7. Pérotin's Organum Compositions
    1. Pérotin (refer to Anonymous IV vignette in CHWM) updated the Magnus liber organi.
    2. Used measured rhythm in upper voice against sustained tenor notes instead of organum purum
    3. Substitute clausulae by Pérotin
      1. Tenors in rhythmic modes or patterns
      2. Tenors often repeated
    4. Triple and Quadruple Organum (three-voice and four-voice organum, respectively), e.g. Sederunt (NAWM 16)

 

© 2002 W. W. Norton & Company

 

Chapter 3: Polyphonic Music from Its Beginnings through the Thirteenth Century

Second Section: Music of the Thirteenth Century
  1. Polyphonic Conductus
    1. Composed by Pérotin and others in the early thirteenth century (dropped out of favor after 1250).
    2. Texts
      1. Metrical Latin poems
      2. Usually nonliturgical but often on sacred themes
      3. Secular conductus texts dealt with serious issues.
    3. Text Setting
      1. Syllabic
      2. All voices (including the tenor) sing the same words in a homophonic texture that was usually notated in score in the manuscripts.
    4. Sometimes included melismatic passages (caudae).
    5. Tenor melody was usually newly composed rather than coming from chant.
    6. CHWM, ex. 3.10 and NAWM 17, Ave virgo virginum
      1. Three strophes with strophic text setting
      2. Probably used in special devotions and processions
  2. The Early Motet (to about 1280) NAWM 15d, f, g
    1. Origins
      1. Clausulae came to be separable pieces.
      2. The addition of words to clausulae resulted in motets, from the French word mot, meaning "word."
      3. At first the words were Latin tropes of the tenor text.
      4. By 1250 the two upper voices usually had differnt but related texts.
    2. Musical features
      1. Tenor melodies (cantus firmus)
        1. Continued to come from chant for most of the thirteenth century
        2. By the end of the thirteenth century tenor melodies often came from other sources.
        3. Tenor parts were laid out in repeated rhythmic patterns.
      2. Upper voices
        1. Second voice from the bottom: motetus
        2. Third voice from the bottom: triplum
        3. Fourth voice from the bottom: quadruplum
  3. The Franconian Motet
    1. Franco of Cologne
      1. Theorist active from ca. 1250 to 1280.
      2. Refer to vignette in HWM.
    2. CHWM, ex. 3.11 and NAWM 18, Amours mi font / En mai / Flos filius eius
      1. Tenor performs the chant melody twice (repeat marked by ||).
      2. Motetus
        1. Originally a clausula duplum
        2. French text added later
      3. Triplum
        1. Moves at a faster rate than the motetus voice
        2. Melody was probably original composition, not from clausula.

 

© 2002 W. W. Norton & Company