The enrichment and manipulation of the traditional repertory, both textually and sonorously, known today as Gregorian Chant, brought about new forms such as tropes, sequences and prosulas and procedures such as polyphony. In their constant search for innovation, musicians (i.e. theorists) and cantors (practical musicians) discovered new forms of polyphonic vocal music which were gradually perfected until they became the veritable protagonists of liturgical ceremonies. These new forms became what is known as the School of Notre Dame of Paris. Its repertory, which originated during the latter part of the 12th century, would pioneer many forms and techniques that would later gain popularity. Apart from representing the first musical collection to be attributed to concrete figures such as Léonin, Pérotin, Robert de Sabillone, etc., the School of Notre Dame established a type of standard vocal music consisting of the widespread use of the alternation between monody and polyphony, and ushering in the use of para-liturgical forms directly derived from other strictly liturgical forms. The Notre Dame repertory was the first to be transmitted principally in manuscript form, as opposed to orally, and represented a search for control between consonance and dissonance, creating a rhythmic system which would establish the foundations for the future Western system of rhythmic and melodic notation.
Transmission of the repertory
The sources containing the Notre Dame repertory were compiled long after the period in which this phenomenon was at the height of its activity. As an example, one of the most famous pieces from the repertory, the four-voice organum Viderunt omnes was composed prior to the year 1198, while the earliest source in which it appears, the Wolfenbüttel Manuscript (Herzog-August-Bibliothek 628) was copied around 1245, when the repertory had supposedly “lost favour”. Moreover, today it is impossible to recover many early compositional procedures or correctly resolve notational problems without the help of the theorists who reflected on music at the time and put these thoughts into writing, recording their impressions and taking “lecture notes”. The mysteries posed by the notation of this period could not be resolved without the aid of a theorist of English origin known as Anonymous IV, whose notes date from around 1270, a century after the first Parisian musicians’ activity. Thus, the first known source of Notre Dame polyphony did not originate in Paris, but was copied at the Benedictine priory of Saint Andrew of Scotland. This reflects the impact of the music, which not only found its way over the English Channel, but crossed the Swiss Alps and the Pyrenees, into Italy and Spain.
Almost all the manuscripts to conserve this repertory are today housed in locations other than those for which they were originally copied. Today, the authentic copy of the Magnus Liber Organi, is no longer conserved in the choir of the cathedral of Paris, although Anonymous IV once saw it there. But the music survived as long as it was conserved in copies that kept the tradition alive. For this reason, proof that this music was performed can be found in codex copied as late as the early years of the 14th century, when the prevailing musical styles had changed to such a degree that they were practically unrecognisable. One of these manuscripts is the Codex Las Huelgas, the only manuscript with these characteristics which is still held in the centre for which it was originally copied: the Cistercian feminine monastery of Santa María La Real de Las Huelgas in the Castilian city of Burgos. This also adds a factor of sociological interest: the performance of polyphony in a feminine monastery, although this was no ordinary monastery.
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