he Development of
Polyphony
Polyphony in the ninth and tenth
centuries
• Artistic style of Carolingian/imperial period —
addition of mass
• Addition of weight to chant
– magadizing (parallel singing)
– troping
• Only textbook musical examples survive
Textbook descriptions of early organum
• Musica enchiriadis, Scolica enchiriadis (ca. 900) – Frankish
• Vox principalis doubled at fifth or fourth below by vox
organalis
– note-against-note style (punctus contra punctum)
– both may be doubled in octaves, producing both
fifths and fourths
• Oblique (and contrary) motion
– provides sense of opening and closing
– allows temporary dissonance and resolution
Guido of Arezzo, Micrologus (ca. 1025)
— principles for organum
• Allows voice crossing
• More variety of intervals — sometimes
from drone effect in vox organalis
• Contrary-motion cadences become the
norm
Music in the Romanesque period
• Social stability leads to time and interest for
composition — period of troubadours
• Sacred and secular societies developed skill and
time for rehearsal of complicated music
Winchester Troper (early eleventh century)
— examples of organum
• Principal voice generally above, but some voice
crossing
• Mostly note-against-note texture
• Organal voice has wider range
• Considerable use of dissonance, often seems
empirical or even haphazard
• Mixed motion — preference for 3–1 contrarymotion cadences
Ad organum faciendum (French, ca. 1100)
— how to improvise organum
• Principal voice lower (sometimes crosses)
• Mostly note-against-note texture
• For soloists in responsorial chants — organal
part has wider range
• More conservative harmony than Winchester
style (melodic style suffers)
• Fourths and fifths most common, also uses
unison and octave and even thirds and sixths
• Contrary-motion cadences
The Abbey of St. Martial — Limoges
Aquitainian polyphony — St. Martial
organum
• New polyphonic style
– principal voices not always based on standard
liturgical music
– principal voice lower, but occasionally voices cross
• Distinction of types
– organum (later organum purum) — melismatic or
florid
– discant — more or less note-against-note passages,
actually neume against neume
• Versus style — rhymed, metrical poetry
• Rhythm in all types roughly indicated by alignment
Codex Calixtinus (ca. 1170)
• From Santiago de Compostela
– major pilgrimage site via several monasteries in
southern France, including St. Martial
– important Romanesque cathedral
• Manuscript named for Pope Calixtus (or Calixtine)
II (r. 1119–1124)
• Mostly liturgical monophony — twenty polyphonic
examples appended
– style comparable to Aquitainian repertoire
– organal style mostly for responsorial chants
– discant style for versus and other ensemble music
Organum from Codex Calixtinus
Gothic architectural aesthetics
• Not just elaboration
but order
• High and layered
• Intricate decoration
• Ex., Notre Dame de
Paris
University of Paris
• Gathering of teachers – order applied to learning
• Charter — 1200 (name “universitas” 1215)
• Discipline faculties
– arts
– medicine
– law
– philosophy
– theology
A student’s day at the University of Paris
— an ordered schedule
•
•
•
•
•
5:00–6:00 — arts lectures
Mass
8:00–10:00 — lectures
11:00–12:00 — disputations or debates
1:00–3:00 — repetitions with tutors on morning
lectures
• 3:00–5:00 — special-topic lectures
• 7:00–9:00 — study, repetitions with tutors
Scholasticism — order applied to
knowledge
• Method
– lecture based on reading of authoritative text
– orderly treatment of pros and cons
– disputation
• Leaders
– Peter Abélard (1079–1142), Sic et non — applied
reason to theological issues
– Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), Summa theologica —
covered all of theology
Early composers of Gothic polyphony
— identified by Anonymous IV
• Léonin (Magister Leoninus, fl. ca. 1175) — university
background
– Magnus liber organi — solo parts of responsorial
chants of Office and Mass for liturgical year
• Pérotin (Magister Perotinus, fl. ca. 1200) — major
contributions identified by Anonymous IV
– revised and replaced parts of Léonin’s work
– organum triplum, organum quadruplum
– “optimus discantor” — wrote many clausulae
Types of Notre Dame polyphony
• Organum purum
– lower voice ultra mensuram (called tenor)
– more likely when tenor is more syllabic
• Discant
– both voices measured — requires rhythmic notation
– more likely when tenor is melismatic
• Clausula
– discant segment
– new compositions may have substituted for
preexisting discant clausulae
Léonin, Organum “Viderunt omnes”
Pérotin, Organum “Alleluia Na[tivitas]”
Rhythmic modes in Notre Dame
polyphony — ordering the parts
1 (trochaic)
long-short (
)
2 (iambic)
short-long (
)
3 (dactylic)
long-short-short ( .
4 (anapestic)
short-short-long (
5 (spondaic)
long-long ( .
6 (tribrachic)
short-short-short (
)
.)
.)
)
Ordering rhythm in the discant clausula
• Patterning of tenor rhythm – repetition of an
ordo (pl. ordines)
• Paired with rhythm in different mode in
duplum
• Early tendency for tenor and duplum ordines
to match; later more common to overlap
Polyphonic conductus in Notre Dame
style — nonliturgical polyphony
• Texts
– could be for religious use and on religious topics
– often secular — expresses cultural concerns outside church
• lament
• civic events
– Johannes de Grocheio (ca. 1320): “sung at parties of the
wealthy and educated”
• Music
– two to four voices
– newly composed tenor
– generally syllabic, familiar style
– often has melismatic caudae
Motet
• Begins with addition of words (mots) to
untexted upper voice(s) of independent
discant clausulae
• Polytextual — named by all three texts
(triplum, motetus, tenor)
Stages in the content of motet texts
• Early — gloss on text of tenor
• Later — free secular, vernacular
– may still be distant gloss on tenor text
– closely related to trouvère song — even borrowing
melodies (motet enté –“grafted”)
Stages in style development in motets
• As with discant, rhythmic ordines lend unity
– more sophistication in staggering phrasing among lines
• Texting
– two-part composition — second text in motetus
– three-part composition — same text in motetus and
triplum
– three-part composition — different texts in motetus and
triplum
• Distinctions in style among lines — layered rhythm
• Tenor treatment
– repetition to increase length
– freely composed — called “tenor” or “neuma”
Social position of 13th-century motets
• Originally developed in sacred context
• Came to be used as secular genre for elite class
– Johannes de Grocheio (ca. 1320) — motets in
modern style only for the educated, who could
understand their subtlety
– Jacques de Liège (ca. 1320) — aimed at educated
lay society
Motet in late 13th century
• Franco of Cologne (fl. 1250–1280) — theorist and
composer
• Problem of how to indicate rhythm in syllabic music
— motets (conductus)
• Solution
– note shapes — long, breve, double long, semibreve
(L, B, DL, SB)
– dots to mark perfections
• practical result — choirbook notation to save space
— use of parts rather than score
Motet in choirbook notation
Petrus de Cruce,
S'amours eust point de
poer / Au renouveler /
Ecce
New problems for the motet
• Petrus de Cruce (fl. 1270–1300) — composer
and theorist
• Free rhythm and even shorter note values in
upper parts — many SBs in the space of a B
(rhythmic inflation)
Questions for discussion
• How was the development and spread of polyphonic
music in the eleventh and twelfth centuries a product
of political and social conditions and events?
• How did different cultural, political, and ecclesiastical
institutions in Paris around 1200 contribute to the
growth of a Gothic polyphonic style?
• What aspects of contemporary cultural and aesthetic
tendencies did the thirteenth-century motet express?