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From About 850-1300 $79 lNI THE RHYTHM OF WESTERN POLYPHONIC MUSIC FROM ABOUT 850-1300 THESIS Presented to the Graduate Council of the North Texas State College in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS By Douglas D. Wiehe, B. M. Beeville, Texas January, 1955 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS . iv Chapter I. THE PROBLEM OF RHYTHM IN POLYPHONY TO ABOUT 1150. * -.- 1 II. THE SYSTEM OF THE RHYTHMIC MODES . 4+7 III. THE MODAL SYSTEM IN THE PRACTICAL MONUMElNTS FROM CA. 1150-1300 . 79 BIBLIOGRAPHY. .. 103 iii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure Page 1. Some Notational Signs in the Solesmes Editions which Indicate Longer Durations . 10 2. Illustration of a Passage Written in Plainsong Notation. ... 12 3. A Passage from the Te Deum . 23 4. An Example from Guido d'Arezzos Microlo . 29 5. The Fifth Method of the Ad Organum Faciendum . 31 6. A Characteristic Passage in the "Sustained4 tone" Style. * - - * - - * . - * * .. 34 7. Part of a Twelfth-century Benedicamus Domino . 36 8. Two Modern Transcriptions of the Modal Patterns. 49 9. An Example of the First and Second Rhythmic ** . ---. .53 Modes. - - - - - - - . - - - 10. An Example of the Third Rhythmic Mode . 54 11. An Example of the Fifth Rhythmic Mode . 55 12. A Probable Example of the Sixth Rhythmic Mode. 56 13. Franco's Example of rgnum Purfm . 70 14. An Example of Repeated Non-modal Patterns . 87 15. Examples of Extensio and Fractio Modi . 87 16. The Semibreve in the Ars Cantus Mensurabilis . 96 17. A Transcription of the Semibreves of Petrus de Cruce .......... ... 99 iv CHAPTER I THE PROBLEM OF RHYTHM IN POLYPHONY TO ABOUT 1150 The polyphony (organum) of the ninth to the last part of the eleventh century consisted basically of note-against- note settings of plain-chant, sequences and hymns. Examples and explanations of this music are found in the musical trea- tises of the period: the Musica Enchiriadis1 (ninth century); the Scholia Enchiriadis2 (ninth century); the Micrologus3 of Guido of Arezzo (mid-eleventh century); the Ad Organum j- endum4 (late eleventh century). In addition there are a number of actual compositions to be found in one of the Win- chester Troper manuscripts of the first half of the eleventh century.5 Unfortunately, the musical notation in these sources is such that it does not indicate or is vague about the dura- tions of the notes. Dasia notation is used in the Musica 1 Martin Gerbert, Scriptores Ecolesiastici de Musisa Sacra Potissimum, 1,152-173. 2Ibid. ,pp. 173-196. 31bidoII, 1-24. 4 Charles Coussemaker, Histoire de ltharmonie, p. 229, cited by Gustave Reese, Music in the Middle , p. 262. 5Three organa of the same manuscript which preserves the treatise are transcribed into modern notation in Coussemaker, on. cit, pp. 226 ff; one is transcribed in the Oxford Historz OF msac 45, second ed., cited by Reese, 9R, c., p.262 I 2 Enehiriadis and the Sfholia Enchiriadis.6 It comprises merely a text, placed according to the pitch of each syllable in spaces made by lines drawn laterally and parallel across the page. At the left side of this large staff, forming a vertical column, are signs which indicate the pitches of the spaces, and in some examples the letters T and $ (tone and semitone) are placed in the spaces to show the correct inter- val. Staffless neumes are used for the two-part organa in the Winchester Troper manuscript.7 The individual characters of neume notation consist of many combinations of diagonal dashes, at times joined and at times used singly.8 Often, one or both ends of these dashes are curled, and some neume groups employ dots also.9 In neume notation the individual pitches are not given accurately at all, the characters serving to indicate only the general direction of the melodic line and nothing whatever of the durations of the notes. 6 For examples of Dasia notation see Gerbert, Rp..it., I, 166 or Apel, The Notation of Polyphonic Music, first edition, 205-6. ATpel also gives a fuller description of Dasia notation. 7Reese, a. cit., 260. 8Reese gives a comprehensive tabulation of Latin and Gothic neume forms. Ibid., 139. 90ne of the theories about the origin of the neumes is that they developed from the use in Greek and Latin litera- ture of diagonal dashes to indicate grammatical accents. These accents actually involved raising and lowering the pitch of the voice. Neumes," Harvard Dictionary of Music. 3 It is probable then that the musical notation of the ninth through the eleventh century was used only as a mne- monic aid by the singers and conductors, although some scholars believe that the neumes implied definite durations.1 0 One might expect that the musical treatises of the time would aid the modern scholar in the task of interpreting the rhythm correctly by giving explicit instructions for reading the no- tation or by including discussions of the rhythmic character- istics. But in fact they offer little assistance, and the passages which do deal with rhythm have been interpreted so differently that they are not very useful in establishing what the practice of the times actually was. The result of the confusion over the rhythmic interpre- tation of early music written in letters and in neume notation is that much important information about the incipient poly- phonic art cannot be uncovered. The most important rhythmic developments in the Middle Ages were those connected with the rise of modal rhythm in the last part of the twelfth century, and it would be of great value historically and practically to know more fully the steps leading up to this epochal inno- vation. However, the period which encompasses these steps is still that in which the notation does not give any clues as to the rhythmic interpretation Thus, very little can 10Ree 0 Reese, p. cit., p. 143. 11I~bid.,p. 273. 4 be said about the rhythm which is not mixed with a good deal of speculation. There is the possibility, according to Friedrich Ludwig and Gustave Reese,that the original rhythm of the plain-chant cantus firms was retained in the early polyphonic settings of it. Ludwig says: "What is known as organum up to this time a. 107g is essentially in a note-against-note setting; the cantus firmus is thus able to retain its original rhythm in a polyphonic setting. *."2 If this is the case, the rhythm of early polyphony can be approximated by applying to it the principles of interpretation arrived at by the modern scholars of the liturgical monophonic repertoire, which in- cludes plain-chant, hymns, and sequences. It must be kept in mind, however, that no indisputable interpretations exist, and it is possible that for some particular place and time one interpretation is applicable while for another place, different in time or not, another interpretation would be correct. That the actual circumstances warrant such an as- sumption cannot be completely proved or disproved, but as Reese says, "If, in fact, the three modern points of view all have some historical justification, it may follow that early l2..#. die bisher genannten Organa gingen im wesent- lichen fiber den Satz Note gegen Note nicht hinaus; die Grundatimme konnte dabei auch im mehrstimmigen Satz ihren originalen Rhythmus beibehalten . ." Guido Adler, Handbuch der Musikpeschichte, 1924, p. 146. See also Reese, p. cit., p. 2b5. Gregorian rhythm was not definitively systematized at all for universal application. 13 Thus, the immense gap of time between the period we are considering and our day has ap- parently caused us many insoluble problems; for one thing the gap is too great for the practice to have endured with any semblance of purity, and for another the period itself ended over five hundred years before the advent of systematic research by modern musicologists.14 The following preliminary material presents the possi- bilities of musical rhythm, in general, from the period be- fore polyphony, i.e., before ca. 850 A.D., to the last decades of the twelfth century, when the introduction of modal rhythm into parts of Leonin's Organa resulted in a corresponding change in notation, making a correct rhythmic interpretation more certain.15 The musical setting of the text and the metrical or non- metrical organization of the text are considered by modern scholars as having been important factors in determining mon- ophonic rhythm. As to the setting of the text, the writer 13 Reese, a. cit., p. 147. 14Armen Carapetyan remarked: "It is at most utopian, at least short-sighted, to expect an absolute or even a fairly exact science out of that which includes non- seientific, imaginative, intuitive--in short, artistic-- elements and comes, furthermore, from an epoch where stand- ardization and scientific method in our sense were surely unknown things." "A Preface to the Transcription of Poly- phonic Music," Musica Disciplina, V (1951), 3-14. 15Apel, M. cit.-, p. 267. 6 of the preface to the Vatican edition of the Roman chant,16 in his instructions to modern performers of the chant, has seen fit to include the words of the author of the treatise Instituta Patwum: 17 "In all texts, whether of lessons, psalmody, or chants, accent and rhythm /concentus?7 of the word are to be observed as far as possible, for thus it is, that the meaning of the text is best brought about."1 8 Aurelian of' Reome, a ninth-century theorist and author of the treatise Musica Diselplina,1 9 states a similar convic- tion: "In rhythm, however, the provision remains that the 'measure' Lmodulatio7 suitably accompany the words. That is to say, the melodic line should not be composed unsuitably, contrary to the meaning of the words." 2 0 l6Li 6LiborUsualis (1938), pp.
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