Micrologus; Organizing Organum

84-20 ORGANIZING ORGANUM

The Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris is rightfully regarded as one of the most monumental artistic achievements of the Middle Ages, and, indeed, of our entire cultural history. While the cathedral was under construction in the late 12th and early 13th centuries, there arose a repertory of music associated with it, which may be less well-known today, but which, in the history of music, stands as an achievement no less important than the cathedral itself in the history of architecture. Like most medieval sacred music, this Notre Dame Style makes use of Gregorian chant melodies, sometimes in extremely long note values as the bottom voice of its texture. Above this chant tenor, as it is called, moves a florid, improvisatory voice which might be said to embellish the Gregorian chant in the same way that the carvings and tracery embellish the structural outline of the cathedral. There is a grandness of scale, and yet an attention to detail, and a singleness of purpose.

The music in this style is referred to as organum. A huge repertory of it survives and yet, because of certain problems of interpretation, it has largely been avoided by performers. To talk about Notre Dame organum and to comment on the major recordings of it that have been made since 1968, I reached one of the world's leading authorities on the subject, Dr. Jeremy Yudkin of Boston University.

YUDKIN: I think that we need to get our information about this matter from two kinds of sources. One is the extant music itself: the written notes. These can tell us about the repertoire in general—what part of the liturgy they are meant to elaborate. They can tell us about pitches of the notes, they can tell us about the words that are sung to them. The second kind of source we need to consult is written in words and not in musical notation. These are the treatises or essays about the music written by scholars, or teachers, or intellectuals of the time.

DUFFIN; How close are these theorists to the actual practice of the time?

YUDKIN: One of the problems with medieval theory is that it tends to remain within the bounds of the scholarly discipline and not deal very much with practical music.

DUFFIN: Are these useful for us as practical sources in interpreting the repertory?

YUDKIN: That is a fascinating question and one to which I have devoted a great deal of thought and research. These men were scholars and intellectuals and probably not practicing musicians, but they do talk about the music in some considerable detail. They are interested in the scholarly and intellectual problems raised by the music, and so the words they use are scholarly words, and my belief is that, by a very careful analysis of the words they used—they wrote of course, all of these men, in Latin—by analyzing their words very carefully, we can actually deduce some very detailed things about the performance of the music itself. I think that the main problem about the Notre Dame repertory is a question of rhythm. We have the notes, as I said, and we have the words, those are not particularly problematic; but the rhythm is not at all clear. A rhythm of the time that was developing around the late 12th or early 13th century is known as "Modal" rhythm, which is a regular rhythm in which long and short notes alternate in fixed patterns, and this modal rhythm is certainly one that developed at this time and was certainly used, at least in some of the music. The question is: does it apply to all of the music throughout?

DUFFIN: In a moment, we are going to listen to a recording of some Notre Dame Organum performed by the Early Music Consort of London under David Munrow. I asked Dr. Yudkin to characterize the interpretation.

YUDKIN: The Munrow recording uses this rhythm that I have discussed, modal rhythm, throughout the music. And this was a view that was held for many years: with this regular rhythm, this alternation between long and short notes pervaded the music throughout, and was used to coordinate the parts. It is a rhythm that is carefully regulated and which results in a kind of regularity that has been called perhaps "dance-like" or "sing-song."

[MUSIC: A section of the Alleluia Pascha Nostrum, the Easter Alleluia, attributed to the great Notre Dame musician, Leonin, and performed by tenor Martyn Hill with the Early Music Consort of London, directed by David Munrow]

DUFFIN: We will be listening shortly to an excerpt from the same piece performed by the Capella Antiqua of Munich, under Konrad Ruhland. But first, here is Jeremy Yudkin:

YUDKIN: One thing that has become clear from a study of the treatises of the 13th century is that there are different performing styles within these polyphonic sections of the music of Notre Dame. It appears, from a close study of these treatises, that the rhythmical regular performance which is called "discant" actually alternates with much freer passages in organum, in which the upper voice appears to improvise against the long notes of the chant, and this is what Konrad Ruhland was trying to recapture in his performance of the Easter Alleluia.

[MUSIC: The Capella Antiqua of Munich, under Konrad Ruhland, performing a portion of the Notre Dame organum Alleluia Pascha Nostrum]

DUFFIN: Here again is Jeremy Yudkin:

YUDKIN: One of the real difficulties about performing this music is the problem of how to deal with those long notes in the chant, which sometimes can be stretched out to quite some length. David Munrow, and most other performers, have solved this problem by giving these notes to a choir. Konrad Ruhland had an organ playing along, as well as with a choir. The main objection I have to this solution is a liturgical one. It is very important for us to remember, however seduced we may be by the beauty of this music, that the entire repertory is a liturgical one. It was created expressly for liturgical observances. All this magnificent music that survives in the Notre Dame manuscripts is for soloists: It was always performed by soloists, as part of ancient liturgical tradition, and it seems, therefore, that we must try to find some other solution to the performance of those long notes than giving them to a choir or to an organ.

DUFFIN: I think also that Craig Wright at Yale University has recently established that Notre Dame did not have an organ until the 14th century and, even then, it was placed over the west door, some 300 feet from the choir area.

YUDKIN: That is absolutely true.

DUFFIN: Our next selection will be from a 1982 recording by the Schola Cantorum Basiliensts, directed by Thomas Binkley. Here is Dr. Yudkin's view:

YUDKIN: Thomas Binkley's recording of the Notre Dame Easter Mass is a fascinating one. Mr. Binkley has approached the performance of the music of Notre Dame through the question of vocal production and technique. On this recording of the Easter Gradual, we can hear three quite distinct vocal techniques. Firstly, the choir, with its relaxed inward meditative quality; the long notes of the chant, sung by soloists, but with a soft, resonant quality that enables the singers to, as it were, go on forever; and, finally, there is the high voice of the soloist, which is enormously focused and agile, with very quick articulation. One other thing that Mr. Binkley has done on this record is to have this upper voice sing without text. Every other performance we have heard has had both the low notes of the chant and the upper voice sing the same text. Mr. Binkley has his soloist sing without text on a single bright vowel as a vocalization around the words of the text, which are sung only in the lower voice. But I think that Mr. Binkley's approach to the question of vocal production is one that has, at least in a certain sense, solved the problem of what to do with these enormously long notes in the chant. Rather than giving them to a choir, he has recognized that they are, in fact, liturgical soloist music, and has thought about a vocal production which allows a soloist to sing these notes at some considerable length without having to take a breath.

[MUSIC: Part of the Easter Gradual, Haec dies, performed by the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, under Thomas Binkley]

DUFFIN: The next piece we will hear is one recorded under the supervision of Jeremy Yudkin and incorporating some of his important new ideas on the interpretation of this repertoire.

YUDKIN: As you know, I have myself done a great deal of research on the Latin treatises of the 13th century that discuss the music of Notre Dame, and my work on these treatises has convinced me of several things, regarding the performance of this magnificent music. Firstly, that the polyphony must be sung by soloists. Secondly, that there are, in fact, not just two, but three distinct styles of performance, discernible in the music itself. All of the theorists, the scholars of the 13th century, agree on this point. There are the two that I have mentioned already, discant—the passages that are regularly rhythmic in both voices—and organum—the free passages, where the upper voice is rhapsodic over long notes in the chant. But there is also a third style, that all the medieval theorists discuss, and it lies between the two previous styles. It is known as copula, and it is a style which has the long notes in the lower voice and regular rhythm in the upper voice, which is a feature of discant.

That gives, then, three clearly distinct styles within the polyphonic piece, which alternate in a very fluid manner. There is one other thing which a very close reading of these theorists has shown me, and that is that there is a rationale for the performance of those free sections, the organum sections. The performance is not just left to the whim or will of the singer, but is based, as you might expect, on a very carefully thought-out system, and that system is the system of consonance and dissonance. The length of each note with certain specific exceptions depends upon its level of consonance and dissonance with the lower voice. The more consonant, the longer it is; the more dissonant, the shorter it is. The exceptions are certain specific notes that are mentioned by the theorists—those deliberately long, opening dissonance and penultimate notes in each phrase, and these can be clearly heard in the performance.

[MUSIC: A section from the Notre Dame organum, Judea et Jerusalem, sung by Scott Wittaker and William Mahrt, under the direction of Jeremy Yudkin]

DUFFIN: The manuscripts which contain the repertory we have been hearing also contain organa for two or even three florid voices above the tenor. I asked Dr. Yudkin if his ideas on rhythm might be applied to these slightly later works as well.

YUDKIN: I think not. What happens in some of the later pieces is, as you say, that an additional solo voice is added above the chant. This makes a crucial change. Instead of having passages in which long notes are held out in the chant and in which a single soloist sings freely or, as I have demonstrated, freely with a certain rationale about it, there are now two voices combined above the long notes of the chant. The difference now is that these two voices have to coincide in a rational way, and the rational way that was devised for this is modal rhythm. So that, once you have three or even four voices, modal rhythm pervades the texture, so that the rhapsodic, improvisatory-seeming style of organum now is gone. In its place, however, are an extraordinary richness and depth of sonority that is truly remarkable.

We are going to listen to a brief excerpt from the 3-voice organum Terribilis est locus iste, the Responsory for the dedication of a church. It was recorded especially for this program by Harlan Hokin, who multi-tracked all of the voices you will I hear. Harlan Hokin, by the way, also happens to be one of the soloists on the Binkley recording which we sampled earlier.

[MUSIC: A sample of the multi-voiced style of Notre Dame organum: Terribilis est locus iste, multi-tracked by Harlan Hokin of Palo Alto, California, especially for this program] My thanks to him, to Scott Wittaker and William Mahrt, and especially to my long-distance guest, Dr. Jeremy Yudkin of the Boston University School of Music, who has a final comment:

YUDKIN: There are an enormous number of questions still to be answered about this wonderful and sophisticated music, but I think we have begun, at least, to understand how wonderful and sophisticated it really is.