Early Polyphony (1150-1300 AD)

Period of the twelfth century saw the upcoming of the first polyphonic compositions: organum, conductus, and later  the motet. These compositions were written in the ars antiqua manner  a scholar s name on the musical traditions of this period. Let us have a look on the rationale behind this art of composing.

 Back in those days musicians at last found a way to actually compose a musical piece and write it down on paper. Believe it or not, but in the earlier periods, improvisations and oral transmission were most popular, apparently not bolstering a safe preservation of a musical composition. Besides this, the compositional proceeding was developed further and structuralized, with the invention of modes, musical forms, consonance rules, and the inevitably rising polyphony. The old practices did not disappear of course, but the surge of ars antiqua swept through Europe.
 First (?) to show the smell of the new wave was a musical form named organum. Basically a plainsong melody, it is composed of two voices  vox principalis, the main melody, and vox organalis, copying the first voice a fifth or a fourth below (reminds of Iron Maiden double guitar melodic passages). The melody could also start in unison, soon to let vox principalis go upwards to a fourth interval, and stay at this level, just to go down to the same note as vox organalis at the end of a cadence. Later on, a musical independence for both voices appeared, as composers let them move by oblique and contrary motion. However the independence was not full, as both voices travelled by the same rhythm.

  But this would soon to be changed by the invention of florid organum where the main melody was put in the lower voice, having prolonged notes, thereby allowing the upper voice to sweep around  it by shorter notes. It is noticeable that the music in an organum begins with intervals of an octave, a fitfth or in unison (or sometimes with a fourth), and uses these intervals almost exclusively throughout the composition. Other intervals were mostly used as a decoration for these particular ones. Additionally, specific rhythmic modes were ascribed to the compositions, having a modern feel of 6/8 or 9/8 meter. These modes could therefore be built of repetitive units of quarter-eighth note, or dotquarter-dotquarter note, or eighth-quarter note, or similar combinations of rhythmic values that together comprised three eighth notes. A melodic phrase could be paused by a rest on the last note of such rhythmic unit.

 Two voice-organum was soon to be further developed into a three- and four-voice organum. This development however was simply an addition of a voice that resembled the upper voice already featured in a two-voice organum. This third voice could cross the second upper voice back and forth, using a closely related rhythm.(Examples of composers: Leonin, Perotin.)

 Besides organum, conductus was also written in two, three, or four voices, all related to each other mostly by the intervals of fourth, fifth, and octave (the third was not ubiquitously accepted as a consonance, although it occurred in some compositions). The rhythmic modes of organum were also applied in conductus, but, contrary to organum, all voices moved in a similar rhythm. In addition, the words were sung syllabically, as opposed to the organum-style long vocals over several notes. In some instances, no text was used at the beginning or end of a composition. The text itself was not purely liturgical (as in organum) and could contain some secular influences.

 Both organum and conductus slowly fell into evanescence after 1250, and the motet became the dominating form of composition. The striking feature of a motet is the presence of several voices carrying different texts. Moreover, the melodies were usually borrowed from some already existing ones, making the voices automatically more rhythmically independent. The signing of the words did not feature any emotional expression of the particular words (which probably wouldn t work by today s standards). Also, the cadences were fairly different from the contemporary ones, as they featured a rising fourth interval in the upper voices countered by a descending second interval in the lowest voice (e.g. GBE into FCF, or DFB into CGC).

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