, indicated that the semi-breve was to be divided into three minims, but without the dot the semi-breve equalled only two minims. The three-part division of the semi-breve constituted major prolation, the two-part, minor prolation. Perfect or imperfect time was sung twice as fast if the time sign was cut by a line,
. The second of these cut signs still survives in the modern sign,
, signifying alla breve time. It appears likely that De Vitry himself was the first to think of using colored notes to signify still another genus of rhythmical subdivision called proportio hemiolia; and that he was the first to use the term contrapunctus, or counterpoint, instead of descant.
Through lack of actual examples of the period we are unable to tell how thoroughly and readily church composers adopted the methods of the ars nova, but eventually their advocacy was of momentous importance. It is true that secular music was the first to benefit by the advance, for it preserved naturally all the elements which the new law purposed to regulate. Hence the first form—that which constitutes the first ground of interaction, the transition to the polyphonic form of church music—was the popular chanson, an elementary form of song, evidently developed from the canson and the ballad of the Troubadours, etc., which, as we know, were composed for a solo voice with an improvised instrumental accompaniment. According to Riemann this development of the chanson first went forward in Italy, in connection with the movement known as the Florentine ars nova, a detailed account of which we have chosen to reserve for our next chapter. The Italian ars nova, which is held by modern historians to have influenced the French ars nova in various ways, and to have transmitted to it a style of composition in which the upper voice was freely invented and harmonically interpreted—though in a rude manner—by the accompanying voice or voices, a style which by 1400 was fully developed. These chansons were, it should be noted, like their prototype, chiefly for one solo voice with instrumental accompaniment and varied by instrumental preludes, interludes, and postludes. Purely vocal polyphony in chansons was rare before 1500, though examples of an elementary kind of part-songs have also been preserved, and, as the polyphonic style advanced, these eventually superseded the instrumentally accompanied solo (monodic song).
Meantime, however, the church had fallen heir to these primarily secular inspirations and developed under the rules of the ars nova a freer contrapuntal style, whose chief vehicles were the Mass and the Motet, forms whose general characteristics have been explained in previous chapters. Characteristic of this new polyphony is the so-called imitative style, whose real origin has never been discovered and which is the distinguishing feature of the schools about to be discussed. The first indications of this imitative, or Netherland, style are found in the works of Jehannot Lescurel and Guillaume de Machault (d. ca. 1372).
Machault is the composer of the first known four-part mass, which was performed at the coronation of Charles V, in 1360. It must be admitted that this is not a very good specimen, even of early polyphony. The parallel octaves and fifths already prohibited by musical authorities had no terrors for Machault, and his discords amount to nothing less than cacophony. It is a historical landmark, however, and serves as a starting point from which to trace the development of contrapuntal methods. In justice to Machault it should perhaps be said that he was a much better poet than composer, and his verses deserve a higher rank than this music, which includes, besides the mass, two and three-part chansons rondeaux and motets.
For some years longer Paris continued to be, as it had been for more than two hundred years, the musical centre of Europe. The prestige it had held so long was lost, ultimately, not only through an actual decline of original power, but through an abuse of the power they possessed. The standards of the old organ masters of Notre Dame, if somewhat dry, were at least scholarly; but we begin to see, in the early fourteenth century, a deterioration, and a tendency among singers to make a display of their ability in improvisation. Canons and rounds of that time, and even long after, were written in a kind of shorthand, understood, presumably, by every trained singer, but nevertheless giving some freedom of judgment to the performer, which was easily abused. The first phrase of the cantus firmus was usually written out; after this a few signs in Latin, meaning nothing to the modern musician unskilled in the mysteries of this art, would indicate the time of entrance and relative pitch for the other voices. Imitation was almost continuously in use; the ‘accidentals’ of modern notation were but rarely indicated, even as late as the time of Palestrina, and the ‘key signature’ of the present day was unknown. However, the training of the chapel singers was such as to give a thorough knowledge of the use of accidentals and of the musical symbols of the time. Intricate rules for their guidance were laid down; but, carried away by the flood of new ideas, and unrestrained by scholarly fastidiousness, many of them indulged in liberties which loaded down the pure melody of the venerable plain-chant with inappropriate ornamentations, and often rendered it hopelessly unrecognizable.