Music in early Christian worship consisted of melody only. Toward the end of the Middle Ages, more complex music, featuring the simultaneous singing of more than one melodic line, was composed for use in worship. For several centuries, this complex—or polyphonic—music was composed by many of Europe’s most famous and skilled composers.
For the first eight hundred years of Christian worship, the musical vehicle for the liturgy was melody. It might take the form of a cantillated prayer of extreme simplicity or of an ornate Gradual for a solemn occasion. But whatever its complexity, monody—the single line of melody untainted by any accompaniment—was the most perfect and satisfying symbol for the unity of Christian believers. It was the advent of notation that allowed polyphony—many melodies together—to develop, in directions that have since made Western music unique.
When buildings are constructed on land which is plentiful, the area they occupy is not a critical factor in their design, and conurbations can be made up of low-story houses, spreading outwards from a center. But as soon as space becomes restricted, then the cost of land rises and economics dictate that buildings must become taller if housing expansion is to continue. So it was with the Gregorian chant. The limits of human endurance meant that solemn chant had developed to its greatest practical length. But a continuing desire for its adornment on special occasions led musicians to consider embellishing the chant in another way altogether; by singing different melodies simultaneously.
The first steps towards a new concept of singing, known as organum, came mostly from France. For a long time, France had favored a special quality of ceremony in worship. The choir at the Abbey of St. Martial at Limoges for instance, gradually took to singing certain items of the Mass by splitting the choir into parts, one group singing the original chant and others (perhaps the basses) singing four or five or eight notes below. The idea (called organum) was a simple method of introducing a further degree of decoration into the chant, but one which nonetheless needed no writing down.
Other possibilities were explored too, especially those which allowed the two parts to become more independent. This freer type of organum required one part to sing the original chant and a second line to supply a more florid part against it. One of the most valuable collections of these two-part pieces, the Winchester Troper, was compiled during the tenth and eleventh centuries at Winchester Cathedral in southern England. This precious manuscript contains all the different sorts of troping (interpolations and additions to the chant) as well as the two-part “florid” organum.
The Beginnings of Polyphony
The great Cathedral of Notre Dame is perhaps the best known of all Gothic cathedrals. Considering its immense size and complexity, it was built with considerable speed between 1163 and 1250, the bulk of it being complete by 1200.
The creation of such a magnificent structure is evidence that France was beginning to enjoy a period of stability and affluence, becoming a country in whose towns culture and learning could flourish as never before. During the building of the new cathedral, composers working at its music school were notating a type of organum more lavishly decorated than anything yet heard.
An anonymous treatise reveals the names of two famous composers from Notre Dame at this period, both canons at the cathedral: Leonin was the best composer of organum. He wrote the Great Book of Organum, for Mass and Office, to augment the Divine Service. This book was used until the time of the great Perotin, who shortened it and rewrote many sections in a better way … with the most ample embellishments of harmonic art. (Anonymous IV, quoted in the Pelican History of Music, vol. 1 [London, 1982], 224.)
This once again draws attention to the continuing delight of Christians in elaborating the liturgy, and luckily the Great Book itself survives. Corroborative evidence shows that the florid vox organalis added to the chant was sometimes improvised from a number of stock musical phrases. Certainly, the special expertise of the musicians was rewarded accordingly: And to each clerk of the choir who will attend Mass, two deniers, and to the four clerks who will sing the Alleluia in organum, six deniers … (Quoted in C. Wright, Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame, 500-1500 [Cambridge, 1989], 339.)
As in the music of the Winchester Troper, Leonin’s pieces (compiled between about 1150 and 1170) supplied an extra vocal line. This was added to sections of chants which in themselves were already decorative—such as Graduals or Alleluias at Mass or Responsorial chants at Matins.
The extra line that Leonin added (called the duplum or second part) needed considerable singing skill. It had to be sung quite fast, not least because as many as forty notes of the duplum fitted to just one of the original chant. As a result, some parts of the chant became greatly stretched out, with its singers spending perhaps twenty seconds or half a minute on a single note. The words, of course, progressed even more slowly.
No wonder then that Perotin, Leonin’s successor, shortened parts of these compositions. At the same time he enriched the harmony still further by adding new voice-parts: a triplum (third part) and sometimes even a quadruplum (fourth part). The independence of the vocal lines can now properly be called polyphony.
Another feature of this remarkable music was the presence of a regular pulse in triple time. The perfection of the number three was inherent in the medieval worldview. As the theorist Jean de Muris wrote in 1319: That all perfection lies in the ternary number is clear from a hundred comparisons. In God, who is perfection itself, there is singleness in substance, but threeness in persons; He is three in one and one in three. Moreover: [there are] … in individuals generation, corruption and substance; in finite timespans beginning, middle and end; in every curable disease onset, crisis and decline. Three is the first odd number and the first prime number. It is not two lines but three that can enclose a surface. The triangle is the first regular polygon. (Quoted in P. Weiss and R. Taruskin, Music in the Western World [London, 1984], 69.)
The rhythm of this early polyphony soon resolved itself into the quick triple time so characteristic of medieval music of this period. Until this time there had been little need for written guidance to the singers concerning rhythm, but the complexity of the Notre Dame organum for the first time necessitated a system for notating rhythm as well as pitch. (The complexities of modal rhythmic notation are described in W. Apel, The Notation of Polyphonic Music, 5th ed. [Cambridge, Mass., 1961].)
The startling effect of the choir suddenly changing from the lone and sinuous melody of the chant to three- or even four-part music did not please everyone. There are records of an increasing number of complaints from churchmen about this elaborate music. John of Salisbury, a contemporary of Perotin, wrote a particularly vitriolic criticism: Music sullies the Divine Service, for in the very sight of God, in the sacred recesses of the sanctuary itself, the singers attempt, with the lewdness of a lascivious singing voice and a singularly foppish manner, to feminise all their spellbound little followers with the girlish way they render the notes and end the phrases … (Quoted in P. Weiss and R. Taruskin, Music in the Western World [London, 1984], 62.)
But such criticism cannot have represented the majority in the liturgical corridors of power, as the practice quickly spread to a number of monasteries and cathedral churches across Europe.
The Motet
Where the original plainsong melody had a melisma—a number of notes sung to one syllable—the composers of Notre Dame felt it appropriate in their organum settings to make the chant move along faster and in rhythm. Strange though it may seem, they took to writing these sections (called clausulae) separately from the main piece, so that one could be substituted for another, like engine spare parts.
Before long, these sections were soon being performed as separate pieces in their own right. What is more, composers started to add completely new sets of words to the upper parts (yet another example of troping), creating what they called a motet, that is, a piece with words to the added lines (from the French mot, meaning “word”).
The result is the most sophisticated musical form known to the Middle Ages, a piece in two, three, or even four parts, whose foundation (the so-called tenor) is a fragment of chant, snipped out, as it were, from the middle of a traditional melody. The tenor had a regular pulse imposed on it, while around it were added between one and three freely composed voice-parts with new texts. By this means it was perfectly possible for up to four different sets of words to be sung together.
Motet technique was developed in a number of ways in the thirteenth century, which were not by any means always pleasing to the church. Such pieces became popular for secular ceremonies (at banquets for instance) and popular tunes would be incorporated in them. Some of these found their way back into church motets, and Pope John XXII in 1323 was compelled to issue a papal bull, in which he made some very significant complaints: Certain disciples of the new school … prefer to devise new methods of their own rather than to sing in the old way. Therefore the music of the Divine Office is disturbed with these notes of quick duration. Moreover, they … deprave it with discants and sometimes pad out the music with upper parts made out of profane songs. The result is that they often seem to be losing sight of the fundamental sources of our melodies in the Antiphoner and Gradual.… The consequence of all this is that devotion, the true aim of all worship, is neglected, and wantonness, which ought to be shunned, increases. We hasten to forbid these methods … (Quoted in P. Weiss and R. Taruskin, Music in the Western World [London, 1984], 71.)
The Conductus
Not all medieval part-music had the complex structure of the motet, for the church initiated another type of polyphony in its continuing pursuit of the “embellishment of harmonic art.” During the twelfth century, it became customary in services of solemnity to lead the lesson-reader to the lectern with a short song called a conductus (from the Latin conducere, to lead).
Once again, more complex and lengthy chants of this processional type developed as musicians delighted in the addition of as many as three extra parts against the original. The result was a piece of music newly composed in all parts (not usually based on traditional chants or other tunes) and with all voices singing the same text.
Franco of Cologne, a composer and theorist of the later thirteenth century, described how such pieces were written: He who wants to write a conductus should first invent as beautiful a melody as he can, then using it as a tenor is used in writing discant (in other words, writing another melody against it, the tenor being the original “beautiful melody”). He who wishes to construct a third part (triplum) ought to have the other two in mind, so that when the triplum is discordant with the tenor, it will not be discordant with the discant, and vice versa. (Franco of Cologne, Ars Mensurabilis Musicae, chapter 11. Further extracts from this important treatise can be found in O. Strunk, Source Readings in Music History [New York, 1990], 139-159.)
This method of composition is very different from the classical music of the last few hundred years. If a choir sings a four-part hymn or anthem, for instance, all voices fill in a particular harmony. If one is missing, or breaks down, the effect on the composer’s intentions is probably fatal. But in medieval times polyphonic music was perceived as a number of layers. The composing process began with the tenor, then the discant or duplum, then the triplum, then the quadruplum—as many layers as circumstances required.
A composer (like Perotin) would feel quite at liberty to add another layer to pre-existing music, or to perform a piece with one of the upper layers missing. Such methods would produce truly appalling results if applied to classical music, but make good sense in the field of Western popular music today. In jazz especially, the “tenor,” in the form of popular song “standards,” is common property, to be surrounded by other musical lines depending on the occasion.
Like the motets, medieval songs in conductus style became fashionable outside the church as well as within, and courtly musicians used the idiom to create part-songs about the Crusades, about politics, and about love.
The Ordinary of the Mass
In the late thirteenth century, polyphonic settings during the celebration of Mass extended for the first time to the Ordinary, those unchanging texts which had at one time been opportunities for the expression of the faith of the whole Christian community. In well-endowed cathedrals and monasteries, the Ordinary texts were left more and more to the choir, who sang on behalf of those present (and perhaps even of those absent). It is a poignant irony that much of the outstanding Christian music of the Middle Ages, and the superb cathedrals that echoed to it, can be understood as monuments to the vaingloriousness of the church during this period.
The life of Guillaume de Machaut illustrated well the blend of secular and sacred that was common in this period. Born in about 1300, he took holy orders and was made a canon of Rheims and of St. Quentin, attached to the cathedral. He had also, from 1323, been secretary to John of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia, who had taken him on his military campaigns all over Europe before Machaut became canon. King John was killed at Crecy in 1346, and from that time Machaut was patronized by the Kings of France, Cyprus and Normandy, his fame as a poet and musician spreading throughout the European courts.
In spite of his holy orders and with a few notable exceptions, his creative energies were devoted to writing long, elegant, and sophisticated love-poems, some of which he set to music. Some of the love lyrics he wrote in his sixties were inspired by his relationship with a nineteen-year-old girl. The poetry of this “jolly and worldly ecclesiastic” was known and admired by a younger contemporary of his, Geoffrey Chaucer (1340–1400).
Apart from some motets with sacred texts, Machaut’s outstanding music for the church was his Messe de Notre Dame, a comprehensive setting of the Ordinary of the Mass for four voices. Settings of the Ordinary already existed by this time, but they seem to be compilations of pieces from various sources and not always complete. His setting is ornate and written with extreme care and great creative energy—it was probably created for some special occasion, though whether it was for Mass at the coronation of Charles V of France in 1364 is now disputed.
Machaut’s Mass is the first setting of the type that countless composers have written since, consisting of a Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus Agnus Dei and a final Ite, Missa Est. Machaut uses the composing techniques of both motet and conductus, moving from the music of intellectual sophistication and artistry (such as the Amen to the Credo) to a simpler style that suggests that he may have taken some heed of Pope John XXII’s bull of a few years earlier. As a monument to the Middle Ages’ expression of spiritual truth, it is outstanding.