1100-1200 Leonin and Perotin and Recording Technology

In about 1100 a new form of Organum emerged known as Florid Organum whereby the second voice that before had run in parallel with the first now departed on a course of it’s own. The easiest way to achieve this was for the lower voice, a drone, to maintain a single note changing less frequently while the higher voice was given more range to wander about. The upper voice had now become more prominent while the lower voice would provide the bass foundation and this is a characteristic that has remained with Western music to the present day.

So the Gregorian Chant developed to Organum and then Florid Organum but before we leave Plainchant altogether, there is one great proponent of the form whose light shines brightly to us down through the ages. She is the most famous woman of her time. She is the Abbess Hildegard Von Bingen (1098-1179). From her convent near Bingen in Germany Hildegard composed mostly Plainchant from the 1140s through to the early 1170s, characterized by the wide range of notes they covered. This was a time when the downward curves of the Romanesque architecture would very soon give way to the new Gothic style with its upward pointing arches in great cathedrals scaling new heights and basically trying to reach the heavens. Listen to Hodie Aperuit and you will here her chant ranging between 12 notes (from D through the octave to A). She was doing the same as those cathedrals would do a little later. She was trying to reach as high as she could with her melody, reaching for God.

The Gregorian chant has a mystical association to it. The question of whether the Gregorian Chant came directly from God must have been quite real at the time. Nowhere is this mystical association more evident than with Hildegard who was said to have begun composing her chants after experiencing a series of religious visions in 1141.

Aside from her contribution to plainchant Hildegard also wrote a morality play with words and music more than 100 years before anything else like it was known to have been written. Her ability as a composer and also poet, can be added to her contributions to theology, natural history and medicine – she was one clever cookie.

Right, back to Organum. It was the cathedral at Notre Dame in Paris, begun in 1163 that was to facilitate the next steps for organum with the music of two composers, Leonin (c.1135-c.1201) and his pupil Perotin (c.1155-c.1210) composing from the 1150s to the early 1200s. With Leonin we hear the perfection of the style known as Florid Organum and born out of necessity to synchronise the two voices rhythm is introduced to the chant. A nice example of this is heard in Viderunt Omnes (I) (track 3). With the introduction of rhythm, the timeless nature that plainchant had, the way it wandered without meter,  is now replaced with a new notion that time must be recognised and mastered  in this music.

Perotin improved and developed the chanting to include three and then four voices. Have a listen to the uplifting and quite lively sound of Alleluja Nativitas. It was as if this music was inspired by the construction work going on at Notre Dame and needed to expand to fill the space as the cathedral took shape around it. This must have sounded completely amazing at the time and if you want to get an idea of that I suggest listening to plainchant for a bit and then put on Perotin and that should help recreate a bit of the impact it must have had on the 12^th Century congregation. If you happen to be strolling around Notre Dame with headphones on, all the better!

Perotin was pushing the boundaries of recording technology to the maximum, just like the Beatles did. The height of recording technology at that time being a feathered quill pen and paper, the latter being the new thing following the introduction of paper mills in France and Italy during the second half of this century. For Abbey Road think Notre Dame, an amazing new Gothic Cathedral recording studio with vastly new improved sound quality to inspire its recording artists. Quite seriously though, I know my linking to 1960s pop music might be a little tenuous here but music like this had not been possible before the emergence of notation because of how it helped Leonin and Perotin to compose. In the previous century the notation had been used really to record what had already been created whereas now notation would start to be used as a tool to create music. With Leonin and Perotin we have the beginning of the idea of the composer 'writing' music.

The music of Leonin and Perotin left such a lasting mark and was sung over again in the decades following the death of those composers before disappearing until being rediscovered in the 19th Century. As far as we know nothing as ambitious was written for over hundred more years.

And what else was happening……?

The crusades continued but apart from that it was relatively peaceful in Europe. The notion of chivalry and knighthood was very exciting and inspiring to Europeans who felt quite righteous about travelling east to protect the pilgrims also making the journey to the holy lands. These noble intentions were then forgotten when they  tried unsuccessfully to create crusador states in the east. The crusades were good for one thing though and that is that the crusaders were accompanied by merchants on their travels and trade flourished and the economy prospered. Lemons, dates, sugar, coffee, diamonds, cotton, gunpowder, writing paper, carpets and best of all, ideas, were all brought in to Europe for the first time from the East. As Italian merchants gained control of the mediterranean they became middlemen for trade with the East and got very wealthy. Venice, built above the water on stilts, eventually dominated trade. Again England was the least stable place with the Normans having to fight to retain power and various battles occurring in Northern France and England. Hildegard, Leonin and Perotin were all composing far from the war zone.

In Technology? The use of the compass for seafaring and astronomy began in Europe in about 1190. This had been invented in China about 50 years before and probably got to Europe via the increased contact the crusaders were making with the east. The compass was a significant boost to sea trade allowing ships to sail beyond sight of land which without it they would seldom do. The main development was the windmills that could rotate to face the wind direction that were developed in North-Western Europe and these were used only for grinding corn. Again it is arguable that this idea was brought in from the East. As with the many new churches these new windmills with their large sails would have been quite spectacular at the time, changing the face of the landscape. Also bought up through Africa and into Spain as a result of the crusades was paper now replacing parchment which had been made from animal skin. The earliest paper mills got the paper industry going in Spain, France and Italy.

And in Architecture? The construction of Romanesque churches continued to flourish providing the centre piece for villages and towns across Europe. Architects were still trying to rediscover the way the Romans had managed to build roofs of stone, which had been forgotten during the dark ages so they had to make do with timber. The buildings began to include more sculptures to convey and promote the message of God. In the 1140s the Abbot Suger created the first Gothic Cathedral at St Denis just north of Paris with his combining of the new pointed arch with other gothic features. This new development in architecture allowed the buildings to let in more light and to be taller with roofs of stone.

And in Art? The artists were more concerned with their work conveying a message from the bible than replicating what we see or feel in nature. Though this art has aesthetic value of course, paintings were to be read like words on a page. These works may have conveyed a more intricate message than the Gregorian Chant ever could but unlike the chant which had developed musically with Leonin and Perotin, in general the art of painting had not really got off the ground yet.

And Philosophy? - Not much of significant note happened in philosophy during this century but this was an era of great intellectual excitement  with the Crusadors bringing back ideas from the east  and the first university having been founded in 1088 in Bologna followed by universities in Paris in about 1150 and Oxford in 1167 and the discovery of classical texts from Ancient Greece that would later help spark the rennaisance.

And Literature? Germanic literature had focused on the heroism of the warrior but there begin to appear the romantic themes of courtly love, loyalty and honour in, for example, the stories of King Arthur. Due to the continuing rule of the French speaking Normans there is little English literature that survived from this century.

Songs to check from this century that make my greatest hitstory are.......cue the x factor countdown........
Leonin - Viderunt Omnes(I) (track 3) from Leonin & Perotin: Sacred music from Notre Dame  - itunes
and then
Perotin - Alleluja Nativitas from Perotin - itunes 


but warm up first with some standard gregorian plain chant like Mass for the Octave of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary: Sanctus: 'Benedictus Mariae filius' (mode VIII) (men of king's college choir/stephen Cleobury) - itunes.... as mentioned in my pre-1000 post)

and then hear how it changes with Leonin and then Perotin.