Concise History of Western Music
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Chapter Index Chapter 1: Music in Ancient Greece and Early Christian Rome Chapter 2: Chant and Secular Song in the Middle Ages, 400Ð1450 Chapter 3: Polyphonic Music from Its Beginnings through the Thirteenth Century Chapter 4: French and Italian Music in the Fourteenth Century Chapter 5: England and Burgundian Lands in the Fifteenth Century: The Beginnings of an International Style Chapter 6: The Age of the Renaissance: Music of the Low Countries Chapter 7: The Age of the Renaissance: New Currents in the Sixteenth Century Chapter 8: Church Music of the Late Renaissance and Reformation Chapter 9: Church Music of the Late Renaissance and Reformation Chapter 10: Opera and Vocal Music in the Late Seventeenth Century Chapter 11: Instrumental Music in the Late Baroque Chapter 12: Music in the Early Eighteenth Century Chapter 13: The Early Classic Period: Opera and Instrumental Music in the Eighteenth Century Chapter 14: The Late Eighteenth Century: Haydn and Mozart Chapter 15: Ludwig van Beethoven Chapter 16: Romanticism and Nineteenth-Century Orchestral Music Chapter 17: Solo, Chamber, and Vocal Music in the Nineteenth Century Chapter 18: Opera, Music Drama, and Church Music in the Nineteenth Century Chapter 19: European Music from the 1870s to World War I Chapter 20: The European Mainstream in the Twentieth Century Chapter 21: Atonality, Serialism, and Recent Developments in Twentieth-Century Europe Chapter 22: The American Twentieth Century
 

Outlines:
  - Early Polyphony
  - Music of the Thirteenth Century
  Quiz
  Listening Guide
Chapter 3: Polyphonic Music from Its Beginnings through the Thirteenth Century
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)

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