Music in Paris during the Middle Ages
When Maurice de Sully began constructing a new cathedral, Paris was a major cultural center in Europe. Not far from the Île de la Cité, the Saint-Victor monastery contributed to this influence, as did the university college founded by Canon Robert de Sorbon a century later (1257). Students flocked from all over Europe, and upon returning to their countries, they shared the teachings received in Paris. This is how an English musician, Anonymous IV, around 1275, reported the intense musical activity that animated the cathedral. The posthumous account of this anonymous figure gave birth to the idea of a “school of Notre-Dame,” a stage for one of the greatest upheavals in the history of music: the advent of polyphony.
The Creation of Polyphony
Polyphony is the art of layering several different voices, as opposed to monody, which prevailed until then. Around the 11th and 12th centuries, monks had the habit of improvising a descant (a voice at the fourth or fifth interval) parallel to the plainchant melodies they performed. However, Parisian masters advanced this new art by composing pages of unusual beauty and creating a new school. Many countries adopted this new style. Nowhere, for a century, did polyphony reach the perfection heard in Paris.
Léonin and Pérotin
The first master of this “school of Notre-Dame” was the cantor Magister Albertus Parisiensis, the successor of Adam of Saint-Victor. His name appears alongside Fulbert of Chartres in the Codex Calixtinus, the first manuscript breaking the anonymity of cantors. Posterity remembers as the founder of this movement Master Leoninus, known as Léonin (1135-1210). He gave written form and measure to the emerging genres of organum and conductus. Organum consisted of a plainchant melody performed slowly (the cantus firmus). Several counterpoint voices, known as organal, more rapid and melismatic, embellished this melody. The conductus was a free composition without liturgical chant. Léonin composed only two-voice pieces. His successor, Pérotin, later modernized Léonin’s organa. He composed original, more complex works, up to four voices. Pipe instruments, rudimentary portable organs supporting the plainchant melody, likely existed at the time.
The Motets
Philip the Chancellor, chancellor of the cathedral from 1217 to 1236 and master of the school of Notre-Dame, was one of the initiators of the motet. The novelty was to place words, possibly secular and in French, on vocalises with one syllable per note to facilitate memorization: hence the name motet, “little word.” This created a two-voice work, one unfolding in long values a fragment of plainchant melody, the other presenting a much faster chant with a different text. The process developed rapidly to three voices, each possibly bearing a different text.
For several decades, the Great Book of Léonin and Pérotin fed many motet composers in France and Europe. Their successors at Notre-Dame were Robert de Sabillon and Francon de Paris. By the end of the 13th century, the motet had become an autonomous genre, key to the musical period known as Ars Antiqua.
Motets and Moral Thought
The poems of motets, sung in the liturgy, sometimes incorporated a moral or political message. For instance, Philippe le Chancelier’s “Mundus a mundicia” and Guillaume d’Auvergne’s “In veritate comperi” protested against the corruption of the clergy. The poems of conductus often mixed sacred and secular themes, and some of these conductus were part of the celebrations accompanying feasts at Notre-Dame with banquets, songs, and dances, such as “Nicholai presuli” (for Saint Nicholas) and “Hac in die salutari” (for New Year’s Day).
Christmas Celebrations at Notre-Dame in the Middle Ages
A text from around 1220 describes the lavish liturgies that took place in the new cathedral. On grand occasions, the nave and choir were adorned with all kinds of draperies and tapestries, and eight major feasts were maximally decorated: Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, Ascension, Purification, Nativity of Mary, Saint Denis, and the Dedication of the Church. It was then that the music reached its full magnificence. Graduals and alleluias with two, three, or even four voices were performed during these ceremonies. The most extraordinary events took place during Christmas week. At that time, Christmas at Notre-Dame opened a complete cycle of feasts: the day of the Nativity, Circumcision, Saint John, or Saint Stephen. Numerous organa concerned this period of the liturgical year.
