Saint Martial School
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The Saint Martial School was a
medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the Post-classical, post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with t ...
school of
music composition Musical composition can refer to an original piece or work of music, either vocal or instrumental, the structure of a musical piece or to the process of creating or writing a new piece of music. People who create new compositions are called c ...
centered in the
Abbey of Saint Martial The Abbey of Saint Martial (french: Abbaye Saint-Martial, Limoges; Limousin: ''Abadiá de Sent Marçau de Limòtges'') was a monastery in Limoges, France, founded in 848 and dissolved in 1791. The buildings were razed at the beginning of the 19t ...
,
Limoges Limoges (, , ; oc, Lemòtges, locally ) is a city and Communes of France, commune, and the prefecture of the Haute-Vienne Departments of France, department in west-central France. It was the administrative capital of the former Limousin region ...
,
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
. Most active from the 9th to 12th centuries, some scholars describe its practices, music, and manuscripts as 'Aquitanian'. It is known for the composition of
trope Trope or tropes may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * Trope (cinema), a cinematic convention for conveying a concept * Trope (literature), a figure of speech or common literary device * Trope (music), any of a variety of different things ...
s,
sequence In mathematics, a sequence is an enumerated collection of objects in which repetitions are allowed and order matters. Like a set, it contains members (also called ''elements'', or ''terms''). The number of elements (possibly infinite) is calle ...
s, and early
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 ...
. In this respect, it was an important precursor to the
Notre Dame School The Notre-Dame school or the Notre-Dame school of polyphony refers to the group of composers working at or near the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris from about 1160 to 1250, along with the music they produced. The only composers whose names hav ...
.
Adémar de Chabannes Adémar de Chabannes (988/989 – 1034; also Adhémar de Chabannes) was a French/Frankish monk, active as a composer, scribe, historian, poet, grammarian and literary forger. He was associated with the Abbey of Saint Martial, Limoges, where he ...
and his nephew Roger de Chabannes were important proponents of this school.


History of the Abbey Saint Martial de Limoges

Many of the modern musicological studies concerning a "Saint Martial School" focus on four manuscripts with remarkably innovative compositions for the 12th century. It is often assumed that these fragments derived from different Southern French monasteries, despite the lack of cantor attributions in the rubrics. However, Sarah Fuller has suggested that this may not be the case, discussing the "myth of a Saint Martial school", where she suggests that the fragments are rather a collective activity of the Abbey's librarians than a didactic activity of the Abbey's cantors. These manuscripts ( F-Pn lat.
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, 3549, 3719, and GB-Lbl Add MS 36881) were, it would seem, more likely collected and bound together by the librarian Bernard Itier, than composed or compiled at St Martial itself. Despite the concordances between these manuscripts, the collection includes many variants. The repertory combines modern forms of poetry with modern forms of musical composition, consisting of settings of proses, tropes,
sequences In mathematics, a sequence is an enumerated collection of objects in which repetitions are allowed and order matters. Like a set, it contains members (also called ''elements'', or ''terms''). The number of elements (possibly infinite) is called t ...
, liturgical dramas, and
organa Organa (Alpo-Morgan) was Kubrat's maternal uncle of the Ermi clan. According to John of Nikiu, he was regent (kavkhan) over the tribe of the Onogur Bulgars from 617 to 630 in place of his nephew, Kubrat, for the time Kubrat was growing up as a h ...
. Even a polyphonic setting of an
epistle An epistle (; el, ἐπιστολή, ''epistolē,'' "letter") is a writing directed or sent to a person or group of people, usually an elegant and formal didactic letter. The epistle genre of letter-writing was common in ancient Egypt as par ...
recitation survives as florid organum. Other modern musicological studies have attempted to identify unifying centre for these sources, such as Cluny rather than Limoges, and with reference to the Cluniac Monastic Association, Fleury and
Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
(especially the
Notre-Dame School The Notre-Dame school or the Notre-Dame school of polyphony refers to the group of composers working at or near the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris from about 1160 to 1250, along with the music they produced. The only composers whose names hav ...
), the
Abbey of Saint Denis The Basilica of Saint-Denis (french: Basilique royale de Saint-Denis, links=no, now formally known as the ) is a large former medieval abbey church and present cathedral in the commune of Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of Paris. The building ...
, and the Abbey Saint-Maur-des-Fossés. Questions about periphery and centre may be answered by the research of political and church history relative to
Cluny Cluny () is a commune in the eastern French department of Saône-et-Loire, in the region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté. It is northwest of Mâcon. The town grew up around the Benedictine Abbey of Cluny, founded by Duke William I of Aquitaine in 9 ...
. In contrast to Fuller's study, James Grier's recent examination of earlier monophonic Proser-Sequentiaries suggests that they were created in the scriptorium of the Abbey Saint-Martial 100 years earlier (than the fore-mentioned fragments including polyphonic compositions), explicitly for liturgical use at Limoges, by Roger and Adémar de Chabannes. The concept of a local school of cantors who documented their innovations in newly designed liturgical books with the libellum structure—later imitated elsewhere (even in the Parisian ''Magnus liber organi)''—is therefore still credible; at least for the 11th century.


Roger and Adémar de Chabannes and the troper-sequentiary

Adémar de Chabannes Adémar de Chabannes (988/989 – 1034; also Adhémar de Chabannes) was a French/Frankish monk, active as a composer, scribe, historian, poet, grammarian and literary forger. He was associated with the Abbey of Saint Martial, Limoges, where he ...
was educated as a cantor and poet by his uncle Roger de Chabannes. The manuscripts written or revised by Roger de Chabannes together with his nephew, were created in the form of troper-prosers and sequentiaries with a new diastematic form of neume notation ( F-Pn lat. 1240, 1120, 1121,
909 __NOTOC__ Year 909 ( CMIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Britain * King Edward the Elder and his sister, Princess Æthelflæd of Mercia, raid Danish ...
), which became soon much more popular than the letter notation of
William of Volpiano Saint William of Volpiano (Italian: ''Guglielmo da Volpiano''; French: ''Guillaume de Volpiano'', also of Dijon, of Saint-Benignus, or of Fécamp; June/July 962 – 1 January 1031) was a Northern Italian monastic reformer, composer, and founding ...
. They belonged to a new type of chant book which was no longer simply a liturgical book, but rather collected new poetry based on liturgical forms (in music as well as in poetry). This new form of chant book consisted of several books ("libelli") - the "proser" or "troper" for verses and tropes, the "sequentiary" for prosulae and
sequences In mathematics, a sequence is an enumerated collection of objects in which repetitions are allowed and order matters. Like a set, it contains members (also called ''elements'', or ''terms''). The number of elements (possibly infinite) is called t ...
(troped elaborated alleluia refrains), the processional with processional
antiphons An antiphon (Greek ἀντίφωνον, ἀντί "opposite" and φωνή "voice") is a short chant in Christian ritual, sung as a refrain. The texts of antiphons are the Psalms. Their form was favored by St Ambrose and they feature prominent ...
, the offertorial for offertories etc. and the
tonary A tonary is a liturgical book in the Western Christian Church which lists by incipit various items of Gregorian chant according to the Gregorian mode (''tonus'') of their melodies within the eight-mode system. Tonaries often include Office ant ...
. This new structural form soon spread beyond Aquitaine becoming popular in France and Normandy, due in part to the Cluniac Monastic Order, which was expanding its influence and adopted the work of the school of cantors at the
Abbey of Saint-Martial The Abbey of Saint Martial (french: Abbaye Saint-Martial, Limoges; Limousin: ''Abadiá de Sent Marçau de Limòtges'') was a monastery in Limoges, France, founded in 848 and dissolved in 1791. The buildings were razed at the beginning of the 19t ...
for liturgical use.
Cluny Abbey Cluny Abbey (; , formerly also ''Cluni'' or ''Clugny''; ) is a former Benedictine monastery in Cluny, Saône-et-Loire, France. It was dedicated to Saint Peter. The abbey was constructed in the Romanesque architectural style, with three churches ...
was founded by
William I William I; ang, WillelmI (Bates ''William the Conqueror'' p. 33– 9 September 1087), usually known as William the Conqueror and sometimes William the Bastard, was the first Norman king of England, reigning from 1066 until his death in 1087 ...
and already in Adémar's time its laic association had gained its power over more and more abbeys, their cantors and their scriptoriums. Adémar's fruitless efforts to become an abbot at Saint Cybard of Angoulême was a personal disappointment, but his ambitions were quite symptomatic for monasteries under Cluniac influence. According to James Grier, Adémar de Chabannes also contributed within two troper-sequentiaries ( F-Pn lat. 1121,
909 __NOTOC__ Year 909 ( CMIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Britain * King Edward the Elder and his sister, Princess Æthelflæd of Mercia, raid Danish ...
) which have the finest tonaries of the region. He regards this late activity as a craftship which he learnt from his uncle, while he was revising older manuscripts, often by adding modal signatures to earlier manuscripts. But the intonation formulas of the tonaries had as well an explicit creative function, which can be demonstrated by an earlier manuscript already written in diastematic neumes. Some composed sequences of this earlier troper-proser-sequentiary ( F-Pn lat. 1118, fol. 114r) are nothing else than a simple repetition of a more and more elaborated intonation, but the verse units cut the melodic motive into different parts, often against its modal structure. These early permutation technique already anticipated later
isorhythm Isorhythm (from the Greek for "the same rhythm") is a musical technique using a repeating rhythmic pattern, called a ''talea'', in at least one voice part throughout a composition. ''Taleae'' are typically applied to one or more melodic patterns o ...
ic composition techniques.


Early polyphony and the Cluniac influence on liturgical reforms

The scriptorium of Limoges continued its activities after Adémar's death in 1034, but it was no longer the only scriptorium of the Limousin diocese. William Sherrill made the hypothesis, that the Gradual of St Yrieix with Gallican preces in its appendix (F-Pn lat.
903 __NOTOC__ Year 903 ( CMIII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Europe * King Berengar I of Italy proceeds to issue concessions and privileges to the Lo ...
) has not been written at Limoges, but by the cantors of the Abbey itself which was possible since it promoted as canon chapter during the second half of the 11th century and depended directly of the Monastery of St Martin at Tours. He even went so far to assume that this gradual has copied from Beneventan graduals, because the included Cassinese chants for the patronal feast of
St Benedict Benedict of Nursia ( la, Benedictus Nursiae; it, Benedetto da Norcia; 2 March AD 480 – 21 March AD 548) was an Italian Christian monk, writer, and theologian who is venerated in the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Orie ...
, and might have served to copy for the gradual of Gaillac, while the latter could have served to write the later gradual for Toulouse. In this comparison the liturgy of the Saint-Martial Gradual (F-Pn lat. 1132) is rather dependent on Cluniac reforms and especially the one of Narbonne, written by the end of the 11th century for the use at the cathedral, resembles to many others written with the same notation in Spain after the conquest of Northern Andalusia, when Aquitanian aristocrats had been related with the Castilian family by marriage. Polyphony was neither invented at Limoges nor did it appear the first time in the notation of its scriptorium. An oral tradition of a polyphonic performance can be traced back to the time, when the ''
Musica enchiriadis ''Musica enchiriadis'' is an anonymous musical treatise of the 9th century. It is the first surviving attempt to set up a system of rules for polyphony in western art music. The treatise was once attributed to Hucbald, but this is no longer accept ...
'' had been written, and Adémar was a contemporary of
Guido of Arezzo Guido of Arezzo ( it, Guido d'Arezzo; – after 1033) was an Italian music theorist and pedagogue of High medieval music. A Benedictine monk, he is regarded as the inventor—or by some, developer—of the modern staff notation that had a ma ...
, who described in his treatise ''
Micrologus The ''Micrologus'' is a treatise on Medieval music written by Guido of Arezzo, dating to approximately 1026. It was dedicated to Tedald, Bishop of Arezzo. This treatise outlines singing and teaching practice for Gregorian chant, and has considera ...
'' a similar practice as "diaphonia" (
discant A descant, discant, or is any of several different things in music, depending on the period in question; etymologically, the word means a voice (''cantus'') above or removed from others. The Harvard Dictionary of Music states: A descant is a ...
), which already allowed to sing more than one note against the cantus during cadences ("occursus"). Notated evidence of alternative practices, where the organal voice changes between different strategies of heterophony (parallel and counter movement) and holding notes which support the modal colour of the cantus, can be found as later added exemplification in monophonic manuscripts of the Abbeys in
Saint-Maur-des-Fossés Saint-Maur-des-Fossés () is a commune in Val-de-Marne Val-de-Marne (, "Vale of the Marne") is a department of France located in the Île-de-France region. Named after the river Marne, it is situated in the Grand Paris metropolis to the southea ...
, Fleury, and
Chartres Chartres () is the prefecture of the Eure-et-Loir department in the Centre-Val de Loire region in France. It is located about southwest of Paris. At the 2019 census, there were 170,763 inhabitants in the metropolitan area of Chartres (as d ...
. One example concerning the tradition of Fleury Abbey is an addition of an organal voice (similar to the organum notation of the Winchester Troper) in a hagiographic Lectionary ( V-CVbav Cod. Reg. lat. 586, fol. 87v) for three Mass graduals «Viderunt omnes» (Christmas), «Omnes de Saba» (Epiphany), and «Gloriosus deus» (Fabianus and Sebastianus). The local style of the cantors were counter movement and holding notes with the syntactic structure underlined by occursus endings. The only exception was
Winchester Cathedral The Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity,Historic England. "Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity (1095509)". ''National Heritage List for England''. Retrieved 8 September 2014. Saint Peter, Saint Paul and Saint Swithun, commonly known as Winches ...
, where a systematic collection of organa can be found in the troper part—the so-called "
Winchester Troper The Winchester Troper refers to two eleventh-century manuscripts of liturgical plainchant and two-voice polyphony copied and used in the Old Minster at Winchester Cathedral in Hampshire, England. The manuscripts are now held aCambridge, Corpus ...
". The earliest polyphony developed in a rather secular context and Cluny played a prominent role in it. What was exactly the role of the Abbey of Saint Martial for a school of anonymous cantors associated with Aquitanian polyphony? The earliest evidence can be found in an older Troper-Proser with libellum structure (F-Pn lat. 1120). In some late additions cantors made exemplifications of a polyphonic performance of organum similar to those additions in the Gradual of the Abbey of Saint-Maur-des-Fossés (F-Pn lat. 12584, fol. 306). Under Cluniac influence the latter abbey developed an extravagant liturgy since 1006, when it was ruled by a new Abbot, who was sent from Cluny, where he had served as a cantor. The polyphony can be easily recognized, because the notator used a method similar to a modern score. There had been other methods as well. Some later additions in the early Troper-Proser (F-Pn lat. 1120) on folio 73v and on 77v look monophonic on the first sight, but the melody is organized in pairs so that each verse of it has to be sung together with an organum voice. The organum voice simply sings the text of the first verse with the melody notated with the text of the second one, and the cantus does vice versa repeat the melody of the first verse, while the singers applies it to the text of the second verse. On folio 81r and 105r we have three early examples of later added florid organum. Its notation technique had already developed in the monophonic manuscripts notated in parts by Adémar, in cases where the scribe of the text did not leave enough space for the neumes. The notator already used vertical strokes, which do indicate how the
melisma 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 referr ...
s have been coordinated with the syllables. On folio 105 recto, a «Benedicamus domino» was notated separately from the florid organum. Both techniques of polyphonic performance, the punctum contra punctum (
discant A descant, discant, or is any of several different things in music, depending on the period in question; etymologically, the word means a voice (''cantus'') above or removed from others. The Harvard Dictionary of Music states: A descant is a ...
) and florid
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 ...
as puncta contra punctum have been once discussed in a 15th-century treatise from Italy, which had been obviously associated with the treatise "Ad organum faciendum" of Aquitanian provenance.


The manuscripts of Aquitanian polyphony

In comparison with the few late traces of a polyphonic singing in the earlier manuscripts, the four main manuscripts and a lot of similar manuscripts of Aquitaine are so full of later developments, that their manifold forms, the calligraphy, the illuminations, and the poetry have not lost their attraction for philologists and musicians. A well-known example is «Stirps iesse», which is nothing else than a florid organum over a «Benedicamus domino» cantus which was widespread within the Cluniac Monastic Association including the ''
Magnus liber organi The ''Magnus Liber'' or ''Magnus liber organi'' (English translation: ''Great Book of Organum''), written in Latin, was a repertory of medieval music known as organum. This collection of organum survives today in three major manuscripts. This re ...
'' of the
Notre-Dame school The Notre-Dame school or the Notre-Dame school of polyphony refers to the group of composers working at or near the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris from about 1160 to 1250, along with the music they produced. The only composers whose names hav ...
. As «Benedicamus domino» verses concluded almost every divine service, Cluniac cantors were supposed to know a great variety of them. Many of them had been new compositions and became favored subjects for new experiments in poetry and musical composition. Florid organum itself like any tropus can be regarded in two ways, as a useful exercise to memorize a certain cantus precisely note by note on the one hand or, as a very refined and embellished performance by a well-skilled soloist or precentor. «Stirps iesse» was actually a combination of both, as a Benedicamus performed «cum organo» it was rather a longer performance during an important liturgical feast, but the troped organal voice added a certain Marian poem to it, which fixed it within the week between Christmas and New Year. The manuscripts "Saint-Martial C" und "D" even were nothing more than additional quaternia within a homiletic collection of sermons. Most of the manuscripts with polyphonic compositions are not just from the Abbey of Saint-Martial at Limoges, but as well from other places of Aquitaine. It is unknown to what extent these manuscripts reflect the products of Saint Martial in particular, it rather seems that there were prosar collections from various places in Southern France. During the 12th century, only a very few composers of the school are known by name, and the new poetic experiments were not only in Latin, they obviously inspired as well courtly poetry of the
Troubadours A troubadour (, ; oc, trobador ) was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100–1350). Since the word ''troubadour'' is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a ''trobairi ...
. Even if St-Martial poetry (versus, tropes and sequences) was almost entirely in Latin, some melodies collected in the manuscripts of the Abbey were also used to compose Old Occitan poetry. Before the collections of the chansonniers, there are already contemporary
Old Occitan Old Occitan ( oc, occitan ancian, label=Occitan language, Modern Occitan, ca, occità antic), also called Old Provençal, was the earliest form of the Occitano-Romance languages, as attested in writings dating from the eighth through the fourteen ...
songs with musical notation for all stanzas which has been written at the scriptory of Saint-Martial Abbey like '' O Maria, Deu maire''.F-Pn lat.
1139 Year 1139 ( MCXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By area Asia * July 8 or August 21 – Jin–Song Wars – Battle of Yancheng: Song Dynasty general Yue ...
, fol
49r
It shows that aristocratic circles present at the Abbey have been closely related to those of the troubadours.


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