A Popular History of the Art of Music / From the Earliest Times Until the Present

by W. S. B. Mathews

II.

The beginnings of contrapuntal and polyphonic music have been traced to what is now known as the old French school, having its active period between about 1100 and 1370, or thereabouts. The principal masters known to us now by name, were all, or nearly all, connected with the cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris, and several of them with the university of the Sorbonne. Paris, during the earlier part of this period, in fact during the greater part of it, was the most advanced and active intellectual center of the entire civilized world. When the French school had ceased to advance, as happened some time before the close of the history in 1370, as above assigned, it found a successor in what is known as the Gallo-Belgic school, which was active between 1350 and 1432. This, in turn, was succeeded by the Netherland school, extending from about 1425 to 1625. The removal of the star of progress from one location to another, as here indicated in the succession of these great national schools, was probably influenced by corresponding or slightly antecedent changes in the commercial or political relations of the countries, rendering the old locality less favorable to art than the new one. For questions of this sort, however, there is not now time or space. To return to the old French school—the recognition of the importance of this school is due to a learned Belgian savant, M. Coussemaker, who happening to discover in the medical library at Montpelier, France, an old manuscript of music, analyzed it, and found that it represented masters previously unknown, and, for the most part, belonging to the period under present consideration. In several monographs upon the history of "Harmony in the Middle Ages," he traced the steps through which polyphony had arisen, and was able to show that, instead of dating from the fourteenth or fifteenth century, as previously supposed, it had its beginnings more than three centuries earlier, and that Paris was the first center of this form of musical effort.

For convenience of classification the entire duration of the old French school may be divided into four periods, of which the first may be taken to extend from 1100 to 1140, the great names being those of Léonin and Pérotin, both organists and deschanteurs at Notre Dame. The Montpelier manuscript contains several compositions by both these masters, and in them we find the germs of the most important devices of counterpoint.

Léonin was known to his contemporaries as "Optimus Organista," on account of his superior organ playing. He wrote a treatise upon the art, a manuscript copy of which appears to be in the British Museum, and its contents have been summarized by an anonymous observer, but never published in full. He is said to dwell mainly upon the proper manner of performing the antiphonary and the graduale. It is also stated that he noted his compositions according to a method invented by himself. If this work could be fully examined it might throw important light upon the point reached in the practice of church music in his day; his notation, also, would be a matter of interest and possibly of importance. Quite a number of compositions by Léonin have been discovered. The successor of Master Léonin, as director of the music at Notre Dame, was one Pérotin, who, besides being a capable deschanteur, was an even greater organist than his teacher, Léonin. He was also a very prolific composer, many of his compositions being still extant. He made additions to his predecessor's manual of the organ.

By descant in the foregoing account, reference is made to the practice of extemporaneous singing of an ornamental part to the plain song or a secular cantus fermus. This art had its origin one or two centuries earlier than the period now under consideration, in the secular organum of Hucbald (see [p. 142]), and all the more talented singers, who were also composers as well, were expert masters of it. Descant was the predecessor of counterpoint.

The chief forms of composition in vogue during this period were motette, rondo and conduit. The terms were rather inexactly applied, but in general the motette appears to have been a church composition, in which often the different voices had different texts, so that the words were wholly lost in performance. The rondo seems to have been a secular composition, and was sometimes written without words. The conduit was an organ piece, occasionally, if not generally, of a secular character. All of these forms were also distinguished as duplum, triplum and quadruplum, according to the number of voices. The harmonic treatment in them is still crude, occasional passages of parallel fifths occurring, after the manner of Hucbald, but in the works of Pérotin passages of this kind are softened somewhat by the device of contrary motion in the other parts. He made a beginning in canonic imitation, Coussemaker and Naumann, after him, giving examples from a composition of his called "Posuit Adjutorium." In these works of Pérotin, and in many others of that day, traces are to be seen of an amelioration of the musical ear, and a preference for thirds and sixths, such as but a short time previously had been unknown to musical theory. This influence was probably due to what was called "Faux Bourdon," a system of accompanying a melody by an extemporaneous second and third part in thirds or sixths.

This art, again, is clearly due to the influence of the round singing of the British isles. Thus we have already a beginning of at least three important elements of good music: The recognition of the triad, or, more properly, of the third and sixth, a beginning in imitation, and the contrapuntal concept of an independently moving melodic accompaniment to a second voice, which in turn had been the outcome of extemporaneous descant. The works of Pérotin were undoubtedly in advance of his time, having in them no small vitality, as is shown in their having formed a part of the repertory of Notre Dame for more than two centuries.

The second period of the old French school extended from about 1140 to 1170, and great improvements were made in the art of harmony meanwhile. The three great masters of this period were Robert of Sabillon, his successor in Notre Dame, Pierre de la Croix, and a theoretical writer named Jean de Garland. The first of these men was distinguished as a great deschanteur, in other words, a ready hand at extemporaneous counterpoint. Pierre de la Croix made certain improvements in notation, the nature of which, however, the musical historians fail to give us. Garland divided the consonances into perfect, imperfect and middle—a system which has remained in use, with slight alteration, to the present day. The thirds and sixths, however, still rank as dissonances. He also defines double counterpoint, and gives examples. The illustrations are crude, but the idea is correct.

The third period of the old French school is sometimes known as the Franconian period, from the two great names in it of Franco of Paris and Franco of Cologne, whose theories have already been noticed. (See [page 146].)

Another celebrated name of this period was that of Jerome of Moravia, also a theoretical writer, whose treatise has been published along with the others in Coussemaker's "Mediæval Writers upon Music." He was a teacher and a Dominican monk at Paris. He was contemporaneous with Franco of Cologne.