Troubadours, organum and Ars nova

Gregorian chant is only part of the medieval landscape. Between the 11th and 14th centuries, two worlds were transformed side by side: outside the church, poet-musicians invented the love song; in the cathedrals, singers learned to stack several melodies on top of each other. This was the birth of polyphony, one of the great inventions of Western music.

The troubadours and the love song

In southern France, from the late 11th century, the troubadours composed songs in Occitan, the language of the people, rather than Latin. The oldest whose poems survive was a great lord, William IX of Aquitaine. Their favourite subject: courtly love, the respectful adoration of an unattainable lady. In the north, the trouvères did the same in Old French; in Germany, the Minnesinger. Among the trouvères, Adam de la Halle wrote the Jeu de Robin et de Marion in the late 13th century, a pastoral play mixing dialogue and songs.

These songs were written down without precise rhythm and without accompaniment: the manuscripts give only the melody and the words. From texts and pictures we know they were accompanied on fiddles (vielles, ancestors of the violin), harps, lutes and flutes. So today's performers reconstruct the accompaniments, each in their own way: two recordings of the same song can sound very different.

Organum: adding a second voice

As early as the 9th century, a treatise (the Musica enchiriadis) describes a way to embellish chant: a second voice doubles the Gregorian melody a fourth or a fifth lower, note against note. This is called organum. The sound is hollow, solemn, very different from our chords. Here is the principle, applied to the start of the hymn Ut queant laxis you already know (a demonstration example):

M:none
L:1/8
Q:1/8=100
K:C
[F,C] [G,D] [_B,F] [G,D] [A,E] [G,D] |]

Little by little, the second voice gained its freedom: it moved in contrary motion, then unrolled long vocal flourishes above the chant, which was stretched out into very long notes. The voice holding the original chant is called the tenor (from the Latin tenere, to hold): the origin of our word for the voice type.

Notre-Dame in Paris, around 1200

Notre-Dame cathedral had been under construction since 1163 when its singers made it the musical centre of Europe. Two names are linked to it: Léonin, credited with a great book of two-voice organa for the whole church year (the Magnus liber organi), and Pérotin, who expanded it and dared pieces in three and even four voices, such as Viderunt omnes and Sederunt principes. The upper voices dance in repeated rhythmic patterns (the rhythmic modes) above a tenor stretched out like a drone: hypnotic and luminous, on the scale of Gothic architecture.

In the 13th century a new form appeared, the motet: words were added to the upper voices, sometimes different texts sung at the same time, in Latin and French, sacred and secular mixed together!

Ars nova and Guillaume de Machaut

Around 1320, treatises associated with Philippe de Vitry describe a "new art", the Ars nova. Thanks to finer notation, a note value could be divided into two as easily as into three, and rhythms became more varied and lively. These boldnesses caused concern: Pope John XXII, in a text from the 1320s, reproached the new musicians for chopping up melodies and drowning out the sacred chant.

The great master of this style is Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300–1377), poet and composer, canon of Reims. He wrote songs in fixed forms (ballades, rondeaux, virelais), motets, and the Messe de Nostre Dame (early 1360s), the oldest known complete polyphonic Mass by a single composer. He personally saw to it that his works were copied into fine manuscripts: one of the first musicians concerned with leaving a complete body of work to posterity. His rondeau Ma fin est mon commencement ("My end is my beginning") is a witty puzzle: one voice sings the other's melody backwards.

Dances and music of the towns

A few instrumental dances also survive, such as the estampies of the 13th and 14th centuries, and collections of pilgrims' songs, such as the Llibre Vermell of Montserrat (14th century), or the Cantigas de Santa Maria gathered at the court of Alfonso X of Castile in the 13th century. The German carol In dulci jubilo, still sung today, also goes back to the 14th century.

What to listen for

• "Open" consonances: fifths, fourths and octaves dominate; thirds are still rare at points of arrival.
• Stacked voices each going their own way, often at different speeds, above a slow tenor.
• Repeated, dance-like rhythms, often in triple time in the Notre-Dame school.
• Very recognisable cadences (phrase endings), where the voices close in onto an octave or a fifth.

Listen

• Pérotin: Viderunt omnes (four-voice organum).
• Guillaume de Machaut: Messe de Nostre Dame; the rondeau Ma fin est mon commencement.
• A troubadour song, for example by Bernart de Ventadorn, in two different performances.
• The Llibre Vermell of Montserrat; an instrumental estampie.