CHAPTER 7

EARLY POLYPHONY

ORGANUM IN MUSIC THEORY SOURCES

• Western art music is marked by one important characteristic: polyphony—not melody, not rhythm but polyphony (the simultaneous sounding of two or more independent musical lines).

Musica enchiriadis (Music Handbook; c890s)

• Ascribed to Abbot Hoger (d. 906)• First surviving written description of early

polyphony, or organum (pl. organa). • Intended to teach church singers how to

improvise polyphonic music on the spot—to take a given Gregorian chant and make it sound more splendid by adding one or more lines around it.

Organum

• A term used to connote all early polyphony generally.• Most organum in the Musica enchiriadis is parallel organum

(organum in which all voices move in lockstep, up or down• Parallel organum at the fifth and then with voices doubled at an

octave. The existing Gregorian chant is to be found in vox principalis (principal voice).

•Micrologus (Little Essay; c1030) written by Guido of Arezzo (d. c1033): allows for contrary motion in organum and discuss the occursus—the coming together of voices at cadences.

An example of two-voice organum from Guido’s Micrologus showing a clear occursus

at the end

De Musica (On Music; c1100) by John of St. Gall: situates the vox principalis (chant) as the lower voice and the vox organalis (newly added voice) above. The chant was now, and would remain, in the lowest voice.

ORGANUM IN PRACTICAL SOURCES

• Winchester Troper (c1000): a book of tropes written in Winchester, England, that also includes the organal voice for about 150 two-voice organa—Kyries and Alleluias for the Mass, for example. The exact pitches of the polyphony cannot be determined with certainty.

Aquitanian polyphony

• A collection of some sixty-five pieces of two-voice organum originating in monasteries in the southern French province of Aquitaine. The notation of these manuscripts gives precise indication with regard to pitch. Acquitanian polyphony often involves a style called sustained-tone organum—the bottom voice holds a note while the fast-moving upper voice embellishes it in florid fashion. The end of the opening phrase of the anonymous two-voice organum Viderunt omnes exhibits such a moment of sustained-tone organum.

Viderunt omnes

An anonymous example of two-voice Aquitanian polyphony Viderunt omnes

The anonymous Viderunt omnes as it exists in the original twelfth-century manuscript coming from

southern France

Codex Calixtunus

• (c1150; named after Pope Calixtus II) A liturgical book and travel guide that includes twenty polyphony pieces for the liturgy of St. James the Apostle. The church of St. James (Santiago) in Compostela, Spain, was a pilgrimage site in the West second in importance only to Rome.

An opening in the Codex Calixtinus

Showing the three-voice organum Congaudeant catholici by Master Albertus of Paris.

The Codex Calixtinus is the first manuscript to ascribe composers’ names to particular pieces.

Congaudeant catholoci

A transcription of Master Albertus’ Congaudeant catholoci, the first example of three-voice music to survive in a practical source.