| In the
tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries, composers and performers expanded
the liturgy in a number of ways. New feasts were created (with their attendant
music for mass and office), and new music created for chants of the ordinary.
Moreover, the liturgical practice of the past was copied down and spread
through staff notation. Previous notational styles assumed that the reader
had an aural familiarity with the piece at hand, but Guido of Arezzo (ca.
991-d. after 1033) helped to create this new notation which specified the
pitches of a melody precisely through a combination of the staff (a set
of horizontal lines and spaces) with one or more clefs to identify the pitches
C, F or (sometimes) G. Guido also developed a system for sightsinging that
involved solmization, using pre-assigned syllables for particular pitches.
Guido's system used hexachords, made up of six notes with only a half-step
between the third and fourth and a whole-step elsewhere (ut--re--mi-fa--sol--la);
to sing a melody with a larger range, one 'mutated' or shifted from one
hexachord to another. The so-called Guidonian hand assigned each pitch and
its hexachordal names to a knuckle of the hand, serving as a mnemonic device.
Notes lying outside of the hand, including all accidentals except B-flat,
were called musica ficta. In addition to notational innovations, several new genres were established during this period of liturgical consolidation. The monophonic conductus, also known as the versus, follows a strophic structure, in which the music is repeated for each successive stanza of poetry. These pieces are thought to have served as accompaniment to liturgical action, as the celebrant moved from one location to another within the church or chapel. The trope, on the other hand, adds new textual and musical material to a pre- existent liturgical composition, particularly introits (the introductory chant for the mass) and the shorter chants of the ordinary. The trope members can come before, in the middle of, or after the host chant; they comment on and amplify the meaning of the original. The trope members were sung by soloists, even if the host chant was choral. Some tropes, such as the Easter and Christmas trope Quem quaeritis, include dialogue and short dramatic interludes, and are thought to be the forbearers to liturgical drama, which also evolved in this period. Another new genre is the sequence, a separate choral composition which follows the Alleluia in the mass. Notker Balbulus (ca. 840-912) claimed to have invented the sequence by putting words to long untexted melismas as a memory aid; while this claim is probably exaggerated, the sequence as a genre is syllabic and has irregular phrase lengths which might reflect musical (rather than textual) inspiration. In the sequence, each musical line usually has one to four clauses, and the entire musical line is commonly repeated before moving to new musical material, giving a structure of A B B C C D D.... Most sequences were banned by the Council of Trent (1545-1563), and only five sequences remain in the modern chant repertory. Finally, the earliest instructions for performing polyphony date to around 900 A.D. Alongside their discussion of melodic organization of a single voice, the Musica enchiriadis and Scholica enchiriadis give instructions for performing parallel organum, in which a given melody (the vox principalis) is harmonized by a second voice (the vox organalis) at a set interval below. When the first voice goes up and down, so does the second. A slightly more independent sound can be created by starting both parts on the same pitch and having one voice held steady (known as oblique motion) until the appropriate perfect interval (usually a fourth or fifth) is reached, and then commencing the parallel motion. This practice is simple enough to be improvised, though organum was presumably performed by soloists, rather than a full choir. Perhaps the most famous composer of this period of liturgical additions was the twelfth-century mystic, abbess, author, and composer Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179). She wrote antiphons (loosely poetic texts accompanied by exuberant, rhapsodic melodies) and sequences, though the repetitive structures of Notker's sequences can be hard to discern amidst the ornamentation of her associative melodic lines, and some sequences lack Notker's couplet structure altogether. She also wrote an early morality play known as the Ordo virtutum intended for her nuns at Rupertsberg. Hildegard's musical languages falls outside of the traditional modal practice of her day, which some have attributed to her lack of traditional musical training, but her literary efforts were sanctioned by the Pope, and the care with which her manuscripts were created reflects the respect she had within her community. |
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