Polyphonic Music
   HOME
*



picture info

Polyphonic Music
Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice, monophony, or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords, homophony. Within the context of the Western musical tradition, the term ''polyphony'' is usually used to refer to music of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Baroque forms such as fugue, which might be called polyphonic, are usually described instead as contrapuntal. Also, as opposed to the ''species'' terminology of counterpoint, polyphony was generally either "pitch-against-pitch" / "point-against-point" or "sustained-pitch" in one part with melismas of varying lengths in another. In all cases the conception was probably what Margaret Bent (1999) calls "dyadic counterpoint", with each part being written generally against one other part, with all parts modified if needed in the end. This point-against-point conception is opposed to "su ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Scolica Enchiriadis
''Scolica enchiriadis'' is an anonymous ninth-century music theory treatise and commentary on its companion work, the ''Musica enchiriadis''. These treatises were once attributed to Hucbald, but this is no longer accepted.Hoppin, Richard H. ''Medieval Music''. Norton, 1978, pp.188-193. . The ''Scolica enchiriadis'' is written as a tripartite dialogue, and despite being a commentary on the ''Musica enchiriadis'', it is nearly three times as long.Erickson, Raymond. "Musica enchiriadis, Scholia enchiriadis". ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians''. London: Macmillan, 2001. Much of the theory discussed by the treatise is indebted to Augustinian conceptions of music, especially its affirmations of the importance of mathematics to music as kindred disciplines of the ''quadrivium''. Later sections draw heavily on the music theory of Boethius and Cassiodorus, two early medieval authors whose works on music were widely read and circulated hundreds of years after their death. The ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Daniel Albright
Daniel Albright (October 29, 1945 – January 3, 2015) was the Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature at Harvard and the editor of ''Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Sources''. He was born and grew up in Chicago, Illinois and completed his undergraduate studies on a full scholarship at Rice in 1967. He received his MPhil in 1969 and PhD in 1970, both from Yale. Albright is also the author of the book ''Quantum Poetics'' which was published by ''Cambridge University Press'' in 1997. He held an NEH fellowship from 1973 to 1974, was a Guggenheim Fellow from 1976 to 1977, and more recently, he was a 2012 Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. Albright began his undergraduate career as a mathematics major, but changed to English literature. Although trained at Yale as a literary critic, after the publication of his book ''Representation and the Imagination: Beckett, Kafka, Nabokov, and Schoenberg'', he was invited by the University of Rochester to come teach there ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Rota (music)
A round (also called a perpetual canon 'canon perpetuus''or infinite canon) is a musical composition, a limited type of canon, in which a minimum of three voices sing exactly the same melody A melody (from Greek language, Greek μελῳδία, ''melōidía'', "singing, chanting"), also tune, voice or line, is a Linearity#Music, linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most liter ... at the unison (and may continue repeating it indefinitely), but with each voice imitation (music), beginning at different times so that different parts of the melody coincide in the different voices, but nevertheless fit harmony, harmoniously together. It is one of the easiest forms of part song, part singing, as only one line of melody need be learned by all parts, and is part of a popular musical tradition. They were particularly favoured in glee (music), glee clubs, which combined amateur singing with regular drinking. The earliest know ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Trope (music)
A trope or tropus may refer to a variety of different concepts in medieval, 20th-, and 21st-century music. The term ''trope'' derives from the Greek (''tropos''), "a turn, a change", related to the root of the verb (''trepein''), "to turn, to direct, to alter, to change". The Latinised form of the word is ''tropus''. In music, a trope is adding another section, or trope to a plainchant or section of plainchant, thus making it appropriate to a particular occasion or festival. Medieval music From the 9th century onward, trope refers to additions of new music to pre-existing chants in use in the Western Christian Church. Three types of addition are found in music manuscripts: # new melismas without text (mostly unlabelled or called "trope" in manuscripts) # addition of a new text to a pre-existing melisma (more often called ''prosula'', ''prosa'', ''verba'' or ''versus'') # new verse or verses, consisting of both text and music (mostly called trope, but also ''laudes'' or ' ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Pérotin
Pérotin () was a composer associated with the Notre Dame school of polyphony in Paris and the broader musical style of high medieval music. He is credited with developing the polyphonic practices of his predecessor Léonin, with the introduction of three and four-part harmonies. Other than a brief mention by music theorist Johannes de Garlandia in his ''De Mensurabili Musica'', virtually all information on Pérotin's life comes from Anonymous IV, a pseudonymous English student who probably studied in Paris. Anonymous IV names seven titles from a ''Magnus Liber''—including '' Viderunt omnes'', ''Sederunt principes'' and ''Alleluia Nativitas''—that have been identified with surviving works and gives him the title ''Magister Perotinus'' (Pérotinus the Master) meaning he was licensed to teach. It is assumed that Perotinus was French and named Pérotin, a diminutive of Peter, but attempts to match him with persons in contemporary documents remain speculative. Identity an ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Léonin
Léonin (also Leoninus, Leonius, Leo; ) was the first known significant composer of polyphonic organum. He was probably French, probably lived and worked in Paris at the Notre Dame Cathedral and was the earliest member of the Notre Dame school of polyphony and the ars antiqua style who is known by name. The name Léonin is derived from "Leoninus," which is the Latin diminutive of the name Leo; therefore it is likely that Léonin's given French name was Léo. Overview All that is known about him comes from the writings of a later student at the cathedral known as Anonymous IV, an Englishman who left a treatise on theory and who mentions Léonin as the composer of the ''Magnus Liber,'' the "great book" of organum. Much of the ''Magnus Liber'' is devoted to clausulae—melismatic portions of Gregorian chant which were extracted into separate pieces where the original note values of the chant were greatly slowed down and a fast-moving upper part is superimposed. Léonin mig ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Organum
''Organum'' () is, in general, a plainchant melody with at least one added voice to enhance the harmony, developed in the Middle Ages. Depending on the mode and form of the chant, a supporting bass line (or '' bourdon'') may be sung on the same text, the melody may be followed in parallel motion (parallel organum), or a combination of both of these techniques may be employed. As no real independent second voice exists, this is a form of heterophony. In its earliest stages, organum involved two musical voices: a Gregorian chant melody, and the same melody transposed by a consonant interval, usually a perfect fifth or fourth. In these cases the composition often began and ended on a unison, the added voice keeping to the initial tone until the first part has reached a fifth or fourth, from where both voices proceeded in parallel harmony, with the reverse process at the end. Organum was originally improvised; while one singer performed a notated melody (the ''vox principalis''), ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Melismatic
Melisma ( grc-gre, μέλισμα, , ; from grc, , melos, song, melody, label=none, plural: ''melismata'') is the singing of a single syllable of text while moving between several different notes in succession. Music sung in this style is referred to as ''melismatic'', as opposed to ''syllabic'', in which each syllable of text is matched to a single note. An informal term for melisma is a vocal run. The term roulade is also sometimes used interchangeably with melisma. History General The term melisma may be used to describe music of any genre, including baroque singing, opera, and later gospel. Within the tradition of Religious Jewish music, melisma is still commonly used in the chanting of Torah, readings from the Prophets, and in the body of a service. Today, melisma is commonly used in Middle Eastern, African, and African American music, Irish sean nós singing, and flamenco. Melisma is also commonly featured in Western popular music. Prevalence in western popular music ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British Library receives copies of all books produced in the United Kingdom and Ireland, including a significant proportion of overseas titles distributed in the UK. The Library is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. The British Library is a major research library, with items in many languages and in many formats, both print and digital: books, manuscripts, journals, newspapers, magazines, sound and music recordings, videos, play-scripts, patents, databases, maps, stamps, prints, drawings. The Library's collections include around 14 million books, along with substantial holdings of manuscripts and items dating as far back as 2000 BC. The library maintains a programme for content acquis ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Saint Boniface
Boniface, OSB ( la, Bonifatius; 675 – 5 June 754) was an English Benedictines, Benedictine monk and leading figure in the Anglo-Saxon mission to the Germanic parts of the Frankish Empire during the eighth century. He organised significant foundations of the Catholic Church in Germany, church in Germany and was made archbishop of Mainz by Pope Gregory III. He was martyred in Frisia in 754, along with 52 others, and his remains were returned to Fulda, where they rest in a sarcophagus which has become a site of pilgrimage. Boniface's life and death as well as his work became widely known, there being a wealth of material available — a number of , especially the near-contemporary , legal documents, possibly some sermons, and above all his correspondence. He is venerated as a saint in the Christian church and became the patron saint of Germania, known as the "Apostle to the Germans". Norman F. Cantor notes the three roles Boniface played that made him "one of the truly outsta ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]