Emiel’s Guide to Classical Music: Episode 3

Ask someone to name a ‘Classical’ composer and they’ll reply with Bach, Mozart or Beethoven. The music we’ve discussed so far is, I’ll admit, a little bit ‘niche’; rarely performed in the concert hall, and probably the reserve of a special group of early music enthusiasts. Still, I’m going to continue my slow march through history – not only because the foundations of music are being laid, but also because you may actually like some of what you hear! I certainly do; the music of these early periods has a certain purity, (to modern ears) and mysticism to it not seen again until the 20th century. So, I hope you keep reading, and once again there should be musical examples on the Felix website to give you a taste. As I mentioned two weeks ago, the Abbess Hildegard von Bingen is often considered the first real musical artist. From a young age she experienced visions, and eventually became Abbess of a convent in the Rhine valley. Her music was unique for its time and reflected her mystical and visionary outlook on life. While her contemporaries were still obsessed with the platonic achievement of a perfect Musica, she wrote music that is poetic and emotive. This effect was created through irregularity, both in the music and text; her verses only pair loosely, suggesting variation rather than repetition, while the words rarely rhyme and are irregularly accented. The musical line too roams over an unprecedented range of notes and is hard to pin down into a precise mode. She called her music a “symphony of the harmony of heavenly revelations”.

Through the 12th Century, music made massive leaps as a result of ever clearer notation. Academic cathedral schools began to flourish and musicians began to write music of increasing complexity. Prime among these was the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, which would dominate the musical world for the next 100 years.

One of the great innovations here was polyphony, music written with multiple independent lines. Polyphony has likely always been in use, and in the 12th Century it was often used as an improvisation on the written monophonic line. Yet at Notre Dame it became an art in itself and was notated. Polyphony almost became synonymous with composition. The first polyphonic compositions were simple drone notes, with another line playing on top of it, or two lines moving parallel at the interval of a fifth. However, the need for ’occursus’, or for the two notes to meet together at the end necessitates that they move in a non-parallel fashion! When two lines move in such a way, different intervals will exist between them, some dissonant and some consonant. Hence, the art of polyphony lies in how to manage these intervals so that they can move independently and still create a harmonic ‘whole’. Our friend Guido of Arezzo wrote the first treatise on polyphony and demonstrated multiple ‘solutions’, leaving the choice up to the composer; this marked an important shift in attitude towards music as a creative art.

Most of what we know from the Notre Dame school comes from an anonymous source. It seems the two greatest composers were Léonin (1150s – 1201) and Perotin (fl. C. 1200), both known as ‘Magistra’, or masters. From Perotin, we have the first surviving piece with 4-part polyphony, but both made massive advances in our understanding of rhythm and harmony. Perotin often moved to his occursus via the most dissonant (or ugly) intervals possible (think back to Pythagoras’s frequency ratios), creating a great sense of relief or resolution. This harmonic ‘movement’ would eventually blossom into our current system of tonal harmony. In two weeks I will elaborate on my claims about rhythm and we will explore the next great flowering of music, the Ars Nova, and why Perotin and Léonin became known as the Ars Antiqua.

Playlist:

1. This is a well-known piece by Hildegard von Bingen. Try to listen out for the features and characters described in the article which make this music so sensual.
2. This music from the St. Martial codex (c. 1100) marks an important point in the development of polyphony. Instead of the polyphonic line being an improvised addition to a Gregorian chant, the flowing melody actually takes the spotlight and plays against the chant which is heard in the lower voice.
3. This setting of Cunctipotens genitor is from an anonymous treatise from c.1100. It was used to demonstrate Organum or the movement of two voices against each other note-to-note. Compare this to the next piece.
4. This is a setting of the same text from the Codex Calixtinus compiled during the 12th Century. The same chant (the lower voice) is heard as in example 3 but at a much slower pace, however the other voice is embellished and very melismatic.
5. This startling piece from the late 12th Century is one of the first surviving examples of a 3-part polyphony! The two outer voices are usually an octave apart on long notes with the middle voice taking the fifth, but occasionally we find example of triadic harmony.
6. This beautiful work by Perotinus Magistra dates from 1198.It has a number of important features. Firstly, it is a 4-part polyphony which was unprecedented. The lowest voice holds a note for each section as a kind of drone while the 3 voices play above it. As I mentioned in the article, there are moments before an ‘occursus’ where we hear a maximum dissonance. In this case listen out for the penultimate chord of the first chunk (just before they go from singing ‘Vi-‘ to the next syllable ‘De-‘, at approximately 00’’59). This is an E against a Bb – the triton or the most dissonant interval possible in pythagorean terms, before it resolves to the consonant fifth. This sense of resolution or finality would come to play a defining role in western music. Another key feature is the recurring rhythmic pattern which is an example of a rhythmic mode – I will discuss these in the next article.