Chapter 16: Early Polyphony (Notre Dame school)+

European Polyphony

• distinctive as it was notated (more control over musical texture)

• notated polyphony was around 850-1150, the end of of Romanesque Era

• with notation music expanded from art of improvisation and oral tradition to music planned and preserved

Organum

• the earliest type of polyphony

• Paris’s cathedral of Notre Dame was a center for organum (in the middle ages)

• preexisting chants formed the basis for early polyphony, including organum

• 2,3,4 vocal lines sung in fixed rhythmic patterns (rhythmic modes)

• Leonin — first composer of polyphonic music that we know “Great Book of Organum”

Opening section: Gaude Maria Virgo (rejoice, Virgin mary). two voices in rhythmic mode. Setting in the style of Perotin. Highly Melismatic. Typical to alternate polyphony (soloists) and monophonic chant (choir)