Download Music of the Middle Ages – Chant after 1000 AD

Chant in the Middle Ages
Part 2: 1000 – 1400 A.D.
by Andrew Lesser, M.M.
Around the beginning of the 11th Century, Europe
witnessed a revival of economic and cultural life.
The First Crusade united Europe under the
common purpose of liberating Jerusalem from
the Turks, which had the added effect of books
and educational practices being brought back
from the Holy Land on a regular basis. Under
Charlemagne’s rule, education was set as a higher
priority as the first universities were being built,
in addition to basilicas and cathedrals springing
up all over Europe. In music, Guido de Arezzo’s
Micrologus was quickly gaining popularity in
monasteries and churches in teaching solfege and
the new musical notation, complete with nuemes
and the predecessor to the modern staff. Hispanic chant was replaced by Gregorian in Spain
around 1071, establishing itself as the dominant form of sacred music expression. Finally, and most
importantly, polyphony was becoming more widespread as previous single melody chants were
being embellished and updated, in addition to new more elaborate chants being composed.
Two Voices for the Price of One
Polyphony consisted of the practice of adding an additional voice, or multiple voices to a
single melody line. When singers improvised chant melodies to give their parts more
independence, new developments in writing chants could be made. At first, singers would simply
improvise a single melody line above an already existing chant melody, but soon composers were
able to write these embellishments in musical notation so that the same performance could be
performed repeatedly. Anonymous treatises, such as the Musica enchiriadis (Music Handbook)
and the Scolia enchiriadis (Excerpts
from Handbooks) described a form of
“singing together”, or diaphony,
which was designated by the term
organum.
Right: Excerpt from Musica enchiriadis
Music of the Middle Ages – Chant after 1000 A.D.
“Orga-What?”
Organum is basically described as two voices sounding together in a plainchant form.
There are several ways to accomplish this. For example, in early organum a plainsong melody,
known as the “principal voice” is simply duplicated at a fifth or fourth below, which is known as
the “organal voice”. The excerpt below shows a parallel organum paralleled at a fourth below the
principal voice, or vox principalis.
Parallel organum doubled at an
interval of a fourth.
Sometimes the organal voice would remain stationary to avoid unstable intervals, such as
the tritone, but dissonances were fairly common and in some organum examples, even embraced.
By the time of Guido’s Micrologus, the organal voice sang above the plainsong melody, in which
the two voices would often cross and even switch places. The development of polyphony did not
happen at once, however. Many monophonic chants were still in use, and even when polyphony
came to the forefront of chant composition, monophonic sections of chant would be used in
combination with polyphonic sections, resulting in alternating portions of the same chant. Many
monophonic chants would be troped (the addition or embellishment of chants) with an
additional voice rather than composers writing new chants. This led to the two main types of
organum, known as florid organum.
Florid organum was divided into two types of composition. In one embellishment, the
lower voice of a two-voiced chant eventually lost its role as a melody, and became a series of
single note “drones”, with the melodic elaborations occurring in the upper voice. This lower voice
became known as the tenor, which means “to hold”. The word tenor designated the lowest voice
of a composition until the Renaissance. Eventually this type of organum was known as organum
purum, or organum duplum. The second type of florid organum was essentially note against note,
and was called discant (“singing apart”). However, problems soon arose when two or more
singers needed to coordinate their individual parts with each other. Their uncertainty of note
durations led to a solution discovered by composers in northern France, particularly of the Notre
Dame School. The monks working out of the Cathedral of Paris were among the greatest
composers of chant in the Middle Ages. They discovered a way to notate rhythmic changes
between two or more individual parts that were known as the six rhythmic modes.
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Music of the Middle Ages – Chant after 1000 A.D.
The Six Rhythmic Modes and the Great Composers
While the rhythmic modes of the Middle Ages differed greatly from our own modern day
notation, this form of scoring lasted well into the late Middle Ages. By about the mid 13th century,
six distinctive rhythmic modes were incorporated into treatises and chant compositions. These
modes corresponded mostly to poetical meters of French and Latin verse, though the rhythms
themselves were flexible in practice. The rhythms
were used in three part progressions known as
“perfections”, which also allowed each rhythmic
mode to be combined with any other rhythmic
mode. Ligatures were also used to tie rhythms
together, usually indicating two, three, or more
tones to a single syllable. In this way, even
melismatic texts could be adapted to the rhythmic
modes.
Of all the great composers of the Notre
Dame school, two are recognized as the highest
practitioners of organum. Leonin and his successor
Perotin lived during the end of the 12th century and
were regarded as masters of organum and discant,
respectively. More on these two figures can be found
in their respective section of the Composer Profiles.
New Forms and New Ideas
Using the rhythmic modes, in addition to polyphonic practices such as organum and
discant, new forms started to be created by composers that are unfortunately lost to history.
Many of the great composers of the Middle Ages remain anonymous though we have many
examples of their fine work and musical innovations. One such composer we know virtually
nothing about is another monk of the Notre Dame tradition, known only as Magister Albertus of
Paris. His Benedicamus Domino trope, known as Congaudeant catholici, is considered by
historians to be the oldest three voiced work currently preserved (see below). Clausulae, or forms
of discant style where a chant melisma in heard in the tenor (like a separate section between two
larger sections of chant) became inserted into existing chants by composers such as Perotin and
his contemporaries. The voices of Perotin’s organum were usually set in a series of rhythmic
motifs, such as in his masterpiece Sederunt principes. He expanded his organum into three and
four voiced polyphony, respectively called organum triplum and organum quadruplum.
Another form was that of the conductus, which grew out of genres such as the hymn and the
sequence. In a multiple voiced conductus, the voices sing the same text in essentially the same
rhythm. The tenor was often newly composed, and while the text drew from sacred verse, a new
form would eventually rise out of these forms, known as the motet.
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Music of the Middle Ages – Chant after 1000 A.D.
First page of the three
voiced Benedicamus
Domino trope,
Congaudeant catholici,
by Magister Albertus of
Paris.
Rise of the Motet (Things Ain’t Never Gonna Be The Same!)
While music of the early Middle Ages was dominated by sacred music such as Gregorian
Chant and the forms which evolved from variations and manipulations of chant, the late Middle
Ages became identified with the gradual widespread popularity of secular music. Secular music,
which will be formally discussed in Secular Music of the Middle Ages, began with monophonic
songs with possible instrumental accompaniment and passed down by oral tradition. With the
advent of polyphony, however, came a new form that became the standard that continued
through the Renaissance, known as the motet. The motet developed from the addition of words
to existing chants (the name “motet” comes from the French mot, meaning “word”), specifically
clausuale. As separate compositions, composers could introduce multiple voicings and even
multiple texts which could be sung at the same time. Most of these motets were composed to be
sung outside the church, but that does not mean that there were no sacred motets in existence.
Generally, however, the motet is defined as the vehicle in which secular music gained a large
foothold in the musical culture of Western Europe.
In the 13th century, Franco of Cologne, a French composer and theorist, developed a
system to provide for more independent parts above the tenor. This new kind of motet, called
Franconian, distinguishes each of the higher voices from each other by a newly created notation
involving “breves” and “semibreves”, which would become the Medieval equivalent of our modern
quarter notes and eighth notes. This system, combined with the composition of mensural, or
“measured” music, gave composers the freedom to specifically communicate their intentions to
the performer. Before this, oral tradition resulted in each performance being altered in some way
by the performer, as there were no copyright laws to enforce the composition’s integrity. With
Music of the Middle Ages – Chant after 1000 A.D.
notation being solidified into the beginnings of what would become common practice, composers
could have more control over how their music was performed.
By the end of the 13th century, both sacred and secular texts were being written, and the
chant of the early Middle Ages was quickly becoming outdated. Many composers would only use
monophonic chant as the basis of adding multiple voices and creating new texts, rendering the
original chant almost unrecognizable. The monophonic style, in addition to organum and discant,
were quickly being replaced by more complex forms. The motet signaled the end of the golden
age of Gregorian Chant, and welcomed an era that would lead mankind to the Renaissance.
For Review:
Chant of the late Middle Ages is characterized by the widespread use of polyphony, or
multiple voiced compositions.
Organum, or “singing together”, was the first form of polyphony, and involved two voices
singing together in parallel motion.
Leonin of the School of Notre Dame was considered the greatest composer of organum
while his successor, Perotin, was the greatest writer of discant. Discant involves two
voices moving together note-for-note.
Performance issues arose from polyphony which prompted the created of the six rhythmic
modes, an invention that gradually led to improvements in music notation.
More voices were gradually added to existing chants, resulting in three to four voiced
textures, called organum triplum, and organum quadruplum, respectively.
Substitute sections, called clausula, were inserted into existing chants and then
eventually were given to their own treatment as separate compositions.
Clausualae that were given texts and added voices became known as motets, which
marked the end of monophonic chant and the increased popularity of secular music.
Suggested Listening:
Leonin: Alleluia Pascha nostrum
Magister Albertus of Paris: Congaudent catholici
Perotin: Sederunt
Anonymous Motet: Amours mi font souffrir (“Love wrongly makes me suffer pain”)
Sources:
Grout, Donald & Palisca, Claude. A History of Western Music, Fifth Edition. W.W. Norton and
Company: New York, 1996.
Palisca, Claude, ed. Norton Anthology of Western Music, Volume 1, Third Edition. W.W. Norton
and Company: New York, 1996.
Hoppin, Richard. Medieval Music. W.W. Norton and Company: New York, 1978.
Hoppin, Richard, ed. Anthology of Medieval Music. W.W. Norton and Company: New York, 1978.
Treitler, Leo, ed. Source Readings in Music History. W.W. Norton and Company: New York, 1998.
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