The Golden Age of European Vocal Polyphony
“At the beginning was the Word of God”
Thomas Edison invented the gramophone in 1877, unless it was the
Frenchman Charles Cros in 1869, whose memory is perpetuated by annual
prizes attributed to the best musical recordings of each year.
It is important to recall this event to underline the fact that
Antiquity has left us no trace of its music for lack of having
developed a reliable system of musical notation: neither Egypt, Sumer,
Greece or Rome have left a single note of music after them.
However, the ancients did produce a certain number of instruments which
authorize us to think that the scales used were generally pentatonic,
i.e. made up of five notes (to our seven) corresponding more or less to
the black keys of our modern piano. To venture into reconstituting the
sound of ancient music on such tenuous ground is a rather hazardous
process which a certain number of record producers have nevertheless
attempted with somewhat mitigated success.
In fact, musically speaking, the main difference between Antiquity and
the Middle Ages is that, in the later period, a system of notation was
progressively devised in parallel with the development of music itself.
Certainly not in order to insure posthumous glory to the composer
– during the Middle Ages, this preoccupation was of secondary
importance: let us not forget the anonymity of the architects,
sculptors and glassworkers of the great cathedrals who worked in a
collective spirit hardly favourable to individual accomplishments
– but by the firm intent of the Church to regulate the use of
music in its religious ceremonies.
It was a question of firmly controlling the periodic repetition of
specific pieces of music according to a religious calendar whose aim
was to program very strictly the order and recurrence of the different
liturgical texts.
It is therefore with the origins of musical notation that the great
adventure of Occidental music begins.
Let us examine this context a little more closely.
After the death of the Emperor Theodosius in 395 A.D., the Roman Empire
accelerates its decline. Its central authority collapses and its
responsibilities are dispersed. The successive waves of the Barbarian
invasions drastically reduce its territorial possessions to the point
of compelling its political centre to take refuge in Constantinople,
new capital of the Empire. The Western territories are reduced to a
powerless vassal status. The economy itself declines progressively with
the decay of commercial exchanges. Chaos menaces, perhaps even the
Apocalypse, often eloquently referred to by the early day Christians.
In this dramatic context, it was the Catholic Church which saved the
day and salvaged the heritage of Antiquity; it was a new-born Church to
which the Emperor Constantine confered official status in 313 A.D. This
new faith accomplished miracles by filling the political vacuum left by
the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Indeed, at the time, the
Church had everything going for her.
First, what we would call today an ideology, all the more conquering
through its ambition of universal impact. Its mobilising capacity was
considerable: having vanquished Roman rationality, it lost no time in
converting the superstitious Barbarian.
Secondly, the Church could count on a well structured organization
based on that of the Empire itself, with the added flexibility of a
close-knit net of bishoprics which, although of strict religious
obedience, enjoyed the largest autonomy in all local matters; not to
mention the extraordinary expansory energy of the monacal movement from
the 6th century on.
Thirdly, the Church had a leader, recognized by all, whose authority
was paramount and all the more efficient since it was relayed by the
decentralized hierarchy of the archbishops, bishops and priests
throughout Christendom.
Lastly, the Church possessed with Latin a universal language, which
would prove to be not only an exceptional factor of unity but also a
most efficient tool in the preservation and safe-guard of an essential
part of the civilization of Antiquity, thereby becoming its natural
inheritor.
It is therefore not surprising that the Church was able to enroll,
either by ordination or by conversion, the strongest spirits of the
times.
One of these, Benedict of Nursia, founded in 513 A.D. the monastic
movement by building an abbey on Mount Cassino, a hill situated between
Rome and Naples. Henceforth, the Church was able to count on successive
contingents of proselytic militants entirely devoted to its expansion.
These monks and their followers were to spread the “good
word” throughout the heathen world, comforting their action by
practising, often in exalted forms, strict and often ascetic rules of
conduct. Thus the Rule of Saint Benedict was to spread throughout
Europe, witness to the vivacious proselytism of the Catholic faith.
This Rule was indeed remarkable: consisting of a coherent set of
prescriptions fixing in detail the practices specific to monastic life,
it was in fact a genial projection of the future structures of feudal
society as it was to develop during the following centuries. The
monastic intention of making each abbey self-sufficient is a clear
prefiguration of the future autarchy of the feudal domains, themselves
reduced to this closed economic system by the rapid degradation of the
old Roman roads, the rarefaction of money and the generalisation of
insecurity.
Certain historians have even established a detailed parallelism between
monastic life and the feudal system. Thus, the adoption of the rule
corresponded to the feudal pledge; the tonsure to the solemn oath of
the vassal; the manual labour of the monks to the statute labour of the
serf, etc...
Whatever that may be, one thing is sure: the Benedictine rule did
outline a global and harmonious plan for a society born out the
shambles of the Roman Empire. It is indeed no coincidence if it was
precisely a Benedictine monk who, elected Pope in 590 A.D. under the
name of Gregory I, or Gregory the Great, transformed the rule into an
instrument of international policy. In the mind of this great visionary
of the Church who was also a remarkable man of action, all human
activities must necessarily be integrated into the great dream he
nourished of taking over the evanescent structures of the Roman Empire.
Henceforth, nothing should escape the authority of Christian theology
such as it was to be developed by the Founding Fathers of the Church:
neither philosophy which was directly subordinated to theology, nor the
liberal arts, themselves dominated by philosophy. And among the liberal
arts, music had a part just as important as arithmetic, geometry and
astronomy.
It is therefore somewhat of an understatement to say that the Christian
doctrine dominated the millennium of the Middle Ages. In fact, it was
consubstantial to the period: it impregnated all the aspects of
people’s lives; not only the relations between people, lord and
vassal, noble man and layman, master and apprentice, man and woman; but
also the relations that people had with the earth, the seasons’
cycle, the agricultural system; life in general and death in
particular. In short, the different natural and cultural processes and
customs of the times.
Could the arts in general diverge from this rule? In the case of the
plastic arts, the answer is clear: be it the evangelical simplicity of
Saint-Nectaire d’Auvergne, or the vertical tensions of the Amiens
cathedral, the hieratic symbolism of the Byzantine mosaics in Ravenna
or of the solemn Virgins on golden panels of the early Siennese
artists, the imposing Cross in the Irish monastery of Clonmacnoise or
the edifying illustrations of the Book of Revelation, it is everywhere
the same voice we hear through the many hands which have fashioned the
masterpieces.
Could things have worked out differently in the case of music?
Certainly not.
During the first centuries of our era, next to certain austere
personalities prompt to criticize the sensuous nature of music, others
spoke out in the latter’s favour. One of the first, and certainly
not the least, was St. Augustine (354 – 430) whose influence on
the Church was hardly negligible:
“When I recall the tears of joy I shed, shortly after my
conversion, on hearing the chants of our Church, I admit anew the
usefulness of such a practice; therefore, without pretending to settle
the question, I would tend to approve maintaining this custom in the
Church; thus by the pleasure of the ear, the weakening soul will always
find solace in piety.”
These different points of view were finally reconciled by the Roman
politician and philosopher, Ancius Manlius Severinus Boetius, in a
purely speculative work entitled “De Musica”. Boetius was
an exceptional historical figure. Born around 470 A.D. in a decadent
Rome torn by internal strife, he was educated in Athens and became
Consul in 510 A.D. under the Emperor Theodoric. But he was accused of
treason and thrown in jail where, awaiting his judgement and,
ultimately, his execution in 525 A.D., he set about writing his major
work: “The Consolation of Philosophy”. This was a
brave attempt to integrate the essential heritage of the philosophers
of Antiquity – Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics – into the
new Christian faith. In this work, Boetius crowns the seven liberal
arts of Antiquity (the trivium: grammar, rhetoric and dialectic; and
the quadravium: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music) by two
superior levels of wisdom: first philosophy, itself subordinated to
theology which thus controls the completed pyramid of knowledge. In his
treaty on music, Boetius manifests the same orderly considerations. His
basic idea is borrowed from Pythagoras: music is a combination of
numbers made audible. Thus, since the universe is itself regulated by
immutable laws which are nothing but numerical relationships, music is
in fact the authentic mirror of the universe and of its divine
perfection. These reflections give us an idea of the importance of
music in medieval thought and psychology.
Furthermore, Boetius makes the distinction between “musica
humana” and the congenial relation it arouses between body and
soul and “musica mundana” or the music of the cosmos which
is fundamental to the harmony of the divine universe. Therefore, by the
second quarter of the 6th century, the Church had acquired the
theological argumentation indispensable to the development of a musical
idiom of its own, whose every day practice could be confronted at all
times with its theoretical foundations. Thus Boetius cleared the way
for the Gregorian reform.
The period called the Middle Ages was characterized by a strong social
consensus centered on the idea of God, the Christian faith and the
Catholic Church. It witnessed the birth and the development of a
unified musical style: vocal polyphony which progressively evolved from
its primary form: Gregorian chant. It was at the beginning of the
second millenium - in the immediate aftermath of the ruthless Viking
invasions - that dawned a new idea, peculiar to Europe, which
profoundly influenced the events of the centuries to come:
individualism or the idea of the autonomy of the human person whose
destiny was no longer necessarily linked to that of society as a whole.
Little by little, medieval man became aware not only of his growing
power over the forces of Nature, but also of the emergence of his own
personality - and of his private interests - in face of the collective
Christian order which had regulated society for centuries.
This phenomenon exerted its influence on all existing art forms. As far
as music was concerned, it was subjected to all the symptoms
characteristic of individualism: subjectivity, personal sentiments and
human passions. This phenomenon implied an ever greater diversity of
technical means. Thus, from its origins in Gregorian chant, music was
to integrate, in due course, successive technical contributions which
our collection of recordings proposes to illustrate. It was from the
very start that necessity created the instrument: what instrument was
better suited than the human voice to convey the Word of God? During
the entire period when the Catholic faith dominated man’s
perception of life, vocal music was supreme and its successive forms
could not but espouse the essential qualities of the human voice:
clarity, fluidity, flexibility, transparency. From its origins in
Gregorian chant to the triumphant 16th century polyphony of Lassus,
Byrd, Victoria and Palestrina, these are the very qualities that we
will recognize again and again, common to all composers, be they of
different origin, culture or language. This is not to say things
developed without problems. Indeed, during the early centuries of our
era, a great controversy raged within the Church itself to determine
whether music should be admitted at all in the religious rites. The
more austere pleaded for its total exclusion, arguing - not
unconvincingly - that Catholicism was a faith in spirit not to be
assimilated with worldly proceedings. However, the majority of the
ecclesiastical hierarchy realized only too well the magical powers of
music - its spell-binding qualities - which could but enhance the
meaning of the latin text - otherwise impenetrable to the masses - and
thus promote the Catholic cause. For want of recruiting the masses by
reason, it was fitting to seduce them by the heart.
According to a tradition now unanimously rejected, it was Gregory the
Great - pope from 590 to 604 AD - who created Gregorian chant ex
nihilo. It is now thought that the latter was progressively developed
during the 7th and 8th centuries by Benedictine communities mainly
situated between the Loire and the Rhine, probably inspired partly by
extant melodies of the Hebraïc cult, partly by the psalmodies of
the early clandestine Church, popular in origin. Gregorian chant, also
known as plainsong, is a melody sung in unison (monody) which ignores
our modern proportional note divisions (note, half-note, crotchet,
quaver, semi-quaver, etc.) and is therefore rhythmically subject only
to the inflexions of the latin text. These melodies are sung a
cappella, that is to say, without any instrumental accompaniment,
instruments having been excluded for centuries because of their
disparaging association with secular banquets and pagan celebrations.
In the minds of those who developed this enormous thesaurus of
plainsong, the rules they put into effect could be nothing less than
unalterable. Wordly examples of the divine will, their very perfection
precluded change.
This view, of course, took no heed whatever of the unrelenting pressure
exercised by the development of individualism, at work at the heart of
the new civil society. Little by little, these rules were relaxed and
transformed. Indeed, the more creative monks, exalted by their passion
to sing the glory of God, did not hesitate to break or transcend the
rules whenever their inspiration saw it fit. If the Church did
proscribe all new compositions, it did not however forbid the
embellishment of existing melodies, their variation or their
development. The words themselves faded into the background
progressively as the music was essentially improvised on the vowels of
the Latin text. Thus the voice was totally free to follow its natural
bent and promote its particular qualities. Then, in order to memorize
these long and complex exercises in vocalization, the singers started
putting words to them of their own invention, sometimes of great
literary quality. Thus, during the 9th century, we witness the birth of
new liturgical texts, just as devoted to the glory of God as the more
traditional Gregorian texts. These new compositions were originally
called «tropes». It is probable that the use of a second
voice next to the Gregorian chant existed long before the 11th century.
But it was only during this century that this became common practice
thanks to the invention of a form of primitive musical staff which
tradition attributes to Guido d’Arezzo (± 990-1050). The
French school of Saint-Martial of Limoges played an essential role in
the development of this technique. Here, two types of primitive
counterpoint were developed:
- the descant which used a second voice, note against note,
either in strict parallelism with the cantus (or main voice), or in
contrary movement.
- melismatic chant, probably developed from the art of
embellishment. While the first voice holds the notes of the basic
Gregorian chant in a long drawn out fashion, the second voice indulges
in flowery arabesques.
One can say that the long drawn out Gregorian part, called
«teneur» (which «holds» the notes - hence our
modern «tenor»), represented the most traditional Catholic
liturgical practice, while the melismatic part depended entirely on the
creative talents of the singer. This tells us a good deal about the
evolution of ideas at the time: the novel notion of «art for
art’s sake» is beginning to take root. It is probably
through the genius and influence of successive cantors attached to the
famous Paris Cathedral of Notre-Dame at the time of its construction
(from 1163 onwards) that European music definitely moved away from oral
tradition to enter the realm of written notation. After a certain
Albert Parisiensis two great masters of early polyphony succeeded at
the helm of the Notre-Dame Chapel: Léonin and Pérotin.
Of the first, we can only conjecture: if an English theoretician of the
13th century does attest to his existence; if tradition attributes to
him several apparently unsigned organas and if he is reputed to have
been active between 1160 and 1180, we will have exausted not only the
known facts but also the acceptable hypotheses. We know little more of
the life of Pérotin than that he was choir master at Notre-Dame
at the beginning of the 13th century, during the last twenty years of
the reign of Philippe Auguste. His talent was so far above that of his
contemporaries that he can be considered as the first great master of
polyphony. The more complex expressive texture of
Pérotin’s music implied new technical breakthroughs in
musical notation, essentially to confer more precision as well as
greater diversification of rhythmic structures. The Perotinian notation
is an ingenious system of ligatures based on six fundamental rhythmic
cells. Understandably, this system remains quite unsatisfactory, for it
does not define any precise proportion between the different elements
of each cell nor does it prescribe any constant relation between the
cells themselves whenever they recur in the course of a specific piece
of music. Obviously, Pérotin had taken a step forward but was
still a far cry from the system of proportional writing we know today,
which only came into existence the next century with the development of
a new musical technique called Ars Nova.
However, what Pérotin does not achieve in liberty of movement
and transparency of texture, he gains in austerity and monumentality.
His art is in perfect harmony with this extraordinary century which, in
France, was dominated by innovators, master builders and political
unifiers.
Jean Salkin