From 1050 to 1250 there are several small treatises on polyphony preserved. Hardly to be described as theory, these unim-posing treatises tend either to state what can be stated about polyphonic practice in very general terms or else give case-by-case enumeration of interval progressions. There are also a number of fragments, each containing a piece or part of a piece. All these, however, are overshadowed by the first real repertory of polyphony in contrary motion, a repertory transmitted once again by St. Martial. Early St. Martial polyphony comes to us from the same collection in which we found versus; indeed, these polyphonic pieces are versus, closely resembling the others in everything except number of voices. Even that qualification is not absolute, since some pieces that appear to be chant in this manuscript turn up in other manuscripts to be polyphonic. In a typical case, Noster cehis, the text consists of a series of couplets, set to what looks like chant. But the melody over the second line of each couplet is entirely different from the melody over the first line—not unheard of, but suspicious. In another source, the same two lines of melody appear with the same couplet, but now written as a piece of two-part polyphony, sung to the first line of the couplet and then repeated for the second line. In another case, Annus novus, there appear to be two alternate refrains; but these two melodies are counterpoint to each other, forming one polyphonic refrain. Characteristic of these cases is strong contrary motion, and note-againstnote motion in the two parts, whether syllabic or neumatic.The most important polyphonic piece in this collection is a Benedicamus versus, Exultemus, a rhyming, scanning text that moves in the infectious rhythms of the new poetry.The whole versus consists of eight lines rhymed in pairs, except for lines 5 and 6; each new line has a new melody. The lower voice, mostly syllabic, has a tune typical of chant versus—frank, appealing, firmly centered on G. The upper voice has anywhere from one to twenty notes for each syllable of the text, and hence for each note of the lower voice. Four or five notes to one of the lower voice is the most common; extended groups of fifteen or twenty notes appear at the rhyming ends of lines, in one case at the beginning of a line and in another at a strong internal rhyme. The tune of the lower voice has no structural repeats to reflect the rhyming couplets; but the upper voice, not in itself tuneful, organizes the form through its choice of figure. The first two lines, a couplet, have similar extended ornaments on their penultimate syllables. The next two lines, another couplet, share a new closing ornament, a scale descending from F to G, very typical of St. Martial polyphonic cadences. The third pair of lines is not a couplet, and hence has no musical rhyme; instead, the strong internal rhyme (verus . . . herus) receives an ornament resembling the end of the first couplet. The last couplet also has different endings, since here the last line, ending with Benedicamus Domino, needs to be set off; it uses the descending scale of the second couplet.
Joseph Hayden and Classic Style of Music
