Page 38 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

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IN CONTEXT
FOCUS
Polyphony and the
notation revolution
BEFORE
c. 1320 The Tournai Mass is
the first known Mass that uses
polyphony—“many sounds.”
c. 1350 The Toulouse Mass
assembles polyphonic
Mass movements arranged
from existing motets (short,
unaccompanied choral pieces). universe than the faith-based
AFTER
1415–1421 The Old Hall
Manuscript contains several
polyphonic settings of the
Kyrie to suit the English
fashion for elaboration of
that section of the Mass.
1440s Missa Caput is an early
Mass by an English composer
using a cantus firmus (“fixed
song”) around which other
melodies are based. It includes
a bass voice below that of
the tenor—one of the first
compositions with a bass part. demonstrate the novel notation
US_036-037_Guillaume_de_Machaut.indd
MUSIC IS A SCIENCE
THAT MAKES YOU LAUGH,
SING, AND DANCE
MESSE DE NOTRE DAME (c. 1360–1365),
GUILLAUME DE MACHAUT
he 14th century was one compositions based on one melody
of the most turbulent and text, with other voices bringing
T periods of medieval history. in different words and melodies).
The “Little Ice Age,” which began Each of Vitry’s motets, only 12
around 1300, resulted in crop of which survive, displayed
failures and famines, including different aspects of a technique
the Great Famine of 1312–1317, known today as isorhythm (from
and the Black Death killed up to the Greek for “same rhythm”),
60 percent of Europe’s population. which aimed to give structure
Such extreme social, economic, to extended compositions.
and environmental upheaval shook
religious certainties. Scholars,
such as the French scientist-cleric
Nicole Oresme (c.1320–1382), began
to envision a more complex
view of the natural world. Music,
already embracing polyphony,
was also influenced by this way
of thinking and exploded into
new metrical complexity when
Oresme’s fellow Frenchman, the
mathematician-composer Philippe
de Vitry (1291–1361), devised a
precise method to notate rhythm.
A new order of rhythm
The new style became known
as Ars nova after de Vitry’s treatise
Ars nova notandi (“The New Art
of Notation”), published in 1322. Musicians illuminate a 1316
Vitry composed vocal pieces to manuscript of Le Roman de Fauvel,
a French poem by Gervais du Bus,
which is interspersed with some
in the form of motets (polyphonic of the first Ars nova music.
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