In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

5 Compositional Process and the Transmission of Notre Dame Polyphony In the middle of the twelfth century, John of Salisbury gave the following account of what must have been some kind of early Notre Dame polyphony (Leonin is considered to have been active at Notre Dame from the 1150s on):1 Music sullies the Divine Service, for in the very sight of God . . . [the singers] attempt, with the lewdness of a lascivious singing voice and a singularly foppish manner, to feminize all their spellbound little fans with the girlish way they render the notes and end the phrases. Could you but hear the effete emotions of their before-singing and their after-singing, their singing and their counter-singing, their in-between-singing, and their ill-advised singing, you would think it an ensemble of sirens, not of men. . . . Indeed, such is their glibness in running up and down the scale, such their cutting apart or their conjoining of notes, such their repetition or their elision of single phrases of the text—to such an extent are the high or even the highest notes mixed together with the low or lowest ones—that the ears are almost completely divested of their critical power, and the intellect, which the pleasurableness of so much sweetness has caressed insensate, is impotent to judge the merits of the things heard. Indeed, when such practices go too far, they can more easily occasion titillation between the legs than a sense of devotion in the brain.2 161 1. Wright, “Leoninus, Poet and Musician.” 2. “Ipsum quoque cultum religionis incestat quod ante conspectum Domini . . . lasciuientis uocis luxu, quadam ostentatione sui, muliebribus modis notularum articulorumque caesuris, stupentes animulas emollire nituntur. Cum praecinentium et succinentium, concinentium et decinentium, intercinentium et occinentium praemolles modulationes audieris, Sirenarum concentus credas esse, non hominum . . . Ea siquidem est ascendendi descendique facilitas, ea sectio vel geminatio notularum, ea replicatio articulorum singulorumque consolidatio, sic acuta vel acutissima grauibus et subgrauibus temperantur ut auribus sui iudicii fere subtrahatur auctoritas , et animus quem tantae suauitatis demulsit gratia, auditorum merita examinare non Little did he know that what he was describing in such colorful language would be considered the cradle of Western polyphony 750 years later. Contrast John’s view on the music with the following statement by Friedrich Ludwig written in 1902: “The greatest and most fateful moment in the entire history of music was the discovery of polyphonic music.”3 In the same essay, he refers to Leonin and Perotin as “individual artists” (Künstlerindividuen).4 We have seen in chapter 1 that for Friedrich Ludwig and his disciples these individual artists and their products were no different in kind from a Beethoven and his works. There are several reasons for this attitude. First, Ludwig thought that in the polyphony of the Magnus liber we have for the first time in European music history the names of two “composers,” Leonin and Perotin, associated with a particular oeuvre. He saw great artists at work who wanted to fix every detail in writing. Thus, one of his priorities was to attribute pieces to Leonin and Perotin. Ludwig saw his role as trying to establish what these composers really intended. He wanted to come as close as possible to the “original” text. Second, Ludwig had deciphered modal notation , which represents the first systematic attempt to notate rhythm in Western music.5 Why should theorists have invented such a complex notational system, he thought, if not in order to have the music performed and transmitted accurately as written? Third, the music is polyphonic, and many find it hard to imagine how two, three, or even four singers could anticipate each others’ moves.6 According to Ludwig, Notre Dame polyphony formed an early link in the evolutionary chain that eventually led to classical Renaissance polyphony, which could not have been conceived without notation. To question the necessity of notation for Notre Dame polyphony seems to threaten the very premise on which the whole polyphonic tradition is based. In recent years, a growing number of scholars have begun to challenge Ludwig’s picture for the following reasons.7 First, the theorist Anonymous 162 compositional process in polyphonic music sufficit. Cum haec quidem modum excesserint, lumborum pruriginem quam deuotionem mentis poterunt citius excitare.” John of Salisbury, Policratus, ed. K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, 48–49, trans. Dalglish, “Origin of the Hocket,” 7. 3. “Der grösste und folgenschwerste Moment der gesamten Musikgeschichte ist die Entdeckung der mehrstimmigen Musik.” In Ludwig, “Die mehrstimmige...

Share