polyphony through the 13th Flashcards
Polyphony
- music in which voices sing together in independent parts
- types of polyphony: motet and organum
- at first was a style of performance
Counterpoint
- singers improvising plain chant departed from simple parallel motion to give their parts independence,
- they set the stage for counterpoint.
- combination of multiple lines
Harmony
The need to regulate the different independent sounds of each line (countepoint) harmony was created.
Organum
- A form of troping the chant
- But now it is added with a horizontal extension across the whole chant
- Reached its sophistication in Notre dame
*new layers of music
Now you dont have to add a trope before or after chants
Parallel and oblique Organum
When a plainchant melody in the principle voice is duplicated fifths below the organol voice.
Sometimes, it produces a harsh sound so to prevent this Oblique motion was invented,
which the organ voice (added part) was melodically different with:
wider intervals including dissonances.
Free organum or discant
Singing a melismatic passage against a single note of the chant
In this style:
the organal or added voice has rhythmic and melodic independence
later called discant
Leoninus (1163-90)
- A notre dame composer
- being called the great singer or composer
- perotinus is his collegue as the beset discant maker
- wrote great book of polyphony “magnus liber”
- which contains two voice settings for the solo sections of respnsorial chants,
- diferent settings for the same passage of chants
Organum Duplum or Aquitaine organum
Lower voice (an existing chant) holding long notes while upper voice (added) singing melismatic.
this was called organum Duplum
rhytmic modes
singer in france devised a system of rhytmic notation involving patterns of long and short notes (rhytmic modes)
Clausula
A section in Discant style was called Clausula
> Characteristically more consonant,
Short phrases
Lively pacing because both voices >move in modal rhythm
Modal rhythm is long and short notes
early Motet (13th)
- > Use of borrowed chant material in the tenor, the tenor is called Cantus Firmus
- > originated when the Notre dame composers troped the Clausula repertory from the Magnus Liber
- Cantus Firmus (borrowed material from chant)
- soon regarded as a secular genre so this opened up possibilities
Protinus (1200-38)
student of Leoninus
> Created a clausula repertory
Added voices to organum, 3 to 4
Franconian
> The Triplum bears a longer text and a faster moving melody with short notes
rather than written in one melodic line and rhythm