In medieval music

Medieval music

Medieval music is Western music written during the Middle Ages. This era begins with the fall of the Roman Empire and ends sometime in the early fifteenth century...

, the rhythmic modes were set patterns of long and short durations (or rhythm

Rhythm

Rhythm may be generally defined as a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time may be applied to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or...

s). The value of each note

Musical notation

Music notation or musical notation is any system that represents aurally perceived music, through the use of written symbols.-History:...

 is not determined by the form of the written note (as is the case with more recent European musical notation), but rather by its position within a group of notes written as a single figure called a "ligature", and by the position of the ligature relative to other ligatures. Modal notation was developed by the composers of the Notre Dame School

Notre Dame school

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, is referred to as the Notre Dame school, or the Notre Dame School of Polyphony....

 from 1170 to 1250, replacing the even and unmeasured rhythm of early polyphony

Polyphony

In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ....

 and plainchant with patterns based on the metric feet of classical poetry, and was the first step towards the development of modern mensural notation

Mensural notation

Mensural notation is the musical notation system which was used in European music from the later part of the 13th century until about 1600."Mensural" refers to the ability of this system to notate complex rhythms with great exactness and flexibility...

 (Hoppin 1978, 221). The rhythmic modes of Notre Dame Polyphony were the first coherent system of rhythmic notation developed in Western music since antiquity.

History

Though the use of the rhythmic modes is the most characteristic feature of the music of the late Notre Dame school

Notre Dame school

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, is referred to as the Notre Dame school, or the Notre Dame School of Polyphony....

, especially the compositions of Pérotin

Pérotin

Pérotin , also called Perotin the Great, was a European composer, believed to be French, who lived around the end of the 12th and beginning of the 13th century. He was the most famous member of the Notre Dame school of polyphony and the ars antiqua style...

, they are also predominant in much of the rest of the music of the ars antiqua

Ars antiqua

Ars antiqua, also called ars veterum or ars vetus, refers to the music of Europe of the late Middle Ages between approximately 1170 and 1310, covering the period of the Notre Dame school of polyphony and the subsequent years which saw the early development of the motet...

through about the middle of the 13th century. Composition types which were permeated by the modal rhythm include Notre Dame organum

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 may be sung on the same text, the melody may be followed in parallel motion , or a combination of...

 (most famously, the organum triplum and organum quadruplum of Pérotin), conductus

Conductus

In medieval music, conductus is a type of sacred, but non-liturgical vocal composition for one or more voices. The word derives from Latin conducere , and the conductus was most likely sung while the lectionary was carried from its place of safekeeping to the place from which it was to be read...

, and discant clausula

Clausula

In Roman rhetoric, a clausula was a rhythmic figure used to add finesse and finality to the end of a sentence or phrase. There was a large range of popular clausulae...

e. Later in the century, the motets by Petrus de Cruce

Petrus de Cruce

Petrus de Cruce was active as a cleric, composer and theorist in the late part of the 13th century. His main contribution was to the notational system.-Life:...

 and the many anonymous composers, which were descended from discant clausulae, also used modal rhythm, often with much greater complexity than was found earlier in the century: for example each voice sometimes sang in a different mode, as well as a different language.

In most sources there were six rhythmic modes, as first explained in the anonymous treatise of about 1260, De mensurabili musica (formerly attributed to Johannes de Garlandia

Johannes de Garlandia

Johannes de Garlandia may refer to:* Johannes de Garlandia * Johannes de Garlandia...

, who is now believed merely to have edited it in the late 13th century for Hieronymus de Moravia, who incorporated it into his own compilation) (Baltzer 2001). Each mode consisted of a short pattern of long and short note values ("longa

Longa (music)

A longa is a musical note that could be either twice or three times as long as a breve, four or six times as long as a semibreve/whole note, that appears in early music...

" and "brevis

Double whole note

In music, a double whole note or breve is a note lasting twice as long as a whole note...

") corresponding to a metrical foot, as follows (Reese 1940, 207–209):

1. Long-short (trochee
   Trochee
   A trochee or choree, choreus, is a metrical foot used in formal poetry consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one...
   
   )
2. Short-long (iamb)
3. Long-short-short (dactyl
   Dactyl (poetry)
   A dactyl is a foot in meter in poetry. In quantitative verse, such as Greek or Latin, a dactyl is a long syllable followed by two short syllables, as determined by syllable weight...
   
   )
4. Short-short-long (anapest)
5. Long-long (spondee
   Spondee
   In poetry, a spondee is a metrical foot consisting of two long syllables, as determined by syllable weight in classical meters, or two stressed syllables, as determined by stress in modern meters...
   
   )
6. Short-short-short (tribrach
   Tribrach (poetry)
   A tribrach is a metrical foot used in formal poetry and Greek and Latin verse. In quantitative meter , it consists of three short syllables; in accentual-syllabic verse , the tribrach consists of three unstressed syllables. According to some sources, another name for this meter is choree, from the...
   
    or choree)

Although this system of six modes was recognized by medieval theorists, in practice only the first three and fifth patterns were commonly used, with the first mode being by far the most frequent (Apel 1961, 223). The fourth mode is rarely encountered, an exception being the second clausula of Lux magna in MS Wolfenbüttel 677, fol. 44 (Hughes 1956a, 320). The fifth mode normally occurs in groups of three and is used only in the lowest voice (or tenor), whereas the sixth mode is most often found in an upper part (Hughes 1954a, 320).

Modern transcriptions of the six modes usually are as follows:

1. Quarter (crotchet), eighth (quaver) (generally barred
   Meter (music)
   Meter or metre is a term that music has inherited from the rhythmic element of poetry where it means the number of lines in a verse, the number of syllables in each line and the arrangement of those syllables as long or short, accented or unaccented...
   
   , therefore, in 3/8 or, because the patterns usually repeat an even number of times, in 6/8 (Apel 1961, 221))
   
2. Eighth, quarter (barred in 3/8 or 6/8)
   
3. Dotted quarter, eighth, quarter (barred in 6/8)
   
4. Eighth, quarter, dotted quarter (barred in 6/8)
   
5. Dotted quarters (barred in either 3/8 or 6/8)
   
6. Eighths (barred in 3/8 or 6/8)
   
   • Cooper (1973, 30) gives the above but doubled in length, thus 1) is barred in 3/4, for example.
   • Riemann (1962, 135) is another modern exception, who also gives the values twice as long, in 3/4 time, but in addition holds that the third and fourth modes were really intended to represent the modern , with duple rhythms ( and , respectively).

Notation

Devised in the last half of the 12th century (Seay 1975, 97), the notation of rhythmic modes used stereotyped combinations of ligatures (joined noteheads) to indicate the patterns of long notes (longs) and short notes (breves), enabling a performer to recognize which of the six rhythmic modes was intended for a given passage. Linked notes in groups of 3, 2, 2, 2, etc. indicate the first mode, 2, 2, 2, 2, … 3 the second mode, 1, 3, 3, 3, 3, etc. the third mode, 3, 3, 3, … 1 the fourth mode, 3, 3, 3, 3, etc. the fifth mode, and 4, 3, 3, 3, etc. the sixth mode (Hughes 1954a, 323–24). The reading and performance of the music notated using the rhythmic modes was thus based on context. After recognizing which of the six modes applied to a passage of neume

Neume

A neume is the basic element of Western and Eastern systems of musical notation prior to the invention of five-line staff notation. The word is a Middle English corruption of the ultimately Ancient Greek word for breath ....

s, a singer would generally continue on in that same mode until the end of a phrase, or a cadence

Cadence (music)

In Western musical theory, a cadence is, "a melodic or harmonic configuration that creates a sense of repose or resolution [finality or pause]." A harmonic cadence is a progression of two chords that concludes a phrase, section, or piece of music...

. In modern editions of medieval music, ligatures are represented by horizontal brackets over the notes contained within it.

All the modes adhere to a ternary principle of metre, meaning that each mode would have a number of beat subdivisions divisible by the number 3. Some medieval writers explained this as veneration for the perfection of the Holy Trinity, but it appears that this was an explanation made after the event, rather than a cause (Reese 1940, 274; Hughes 1954a, 319–20). Less speculatively, the flexibility of rhythm possible within the system allows for variety and avoids monotony. Notes could be broken down into shorter units (called fractio modi by Anonymous IV

Anonymous IV

Anonymous IV is the designation given to the writer of an important treatise of medieval music theory. He was probably an English student working at Notre Dame in Paris, most likely in the 1270s or 1280s. Nothing is known about his life, not even his name...

) or two rhythmic units of the same mode could be combined into one (extensio modi) (Seay 1975, 98–99). An alternative term used by Garlandia for both types of alteration was "reduction" (Roesner 2001). These alterations may be accomplished in several ways: extensio modi by the insertion of single (unligated) long notes or a smaller-than-usual ligature; fractio modi by the insertion of a larger-than-usual ligature, or by special signs. These were of two types, the plica and the climacus (Hiley and Payne 2001).

The plica was adopted from the liquescent neumes (cephalicus) of chant notation, and receives its name (Latin for "fold") from its form which, when written as a separate note, had the shape of a U or an inverted U. In modal notation, however, the plica usually occurs as a vertical stroke added to the end of a ligature, making it a ligatura plicata. The plica usually indicates an added breve on a weak beat (Hiley and Payne 2001). The pitch indicated by the plica depends on the pitches of the note it is attached to and the note following it. If both notes are the same, then the plica tone is the upper or lower neighbor, depending on the direction of the stem. If the interval between the main notes is a third, then the plica tone fills it in as a passing tone. If the two main notes are a second apart, or at an interval of a fourth or larger, musical context must decide the pitch of the plica tone (Apel 1961, 227).


The climacus is a rapid descending scale figure, written as a single note or a ligature followed by a series of two or more descending lozenges. Anonymous IV called these currentes (Latin "running"), probably in reference to the similar figures found in pre-modal Aquitanian and Parisian polyphony. Franco of Cologne

Franco of Cologne

Franco of Cologne was a German music theorist and possibly composer. He was one of the most influential theorists of the late Medieval era, and was the first to propose an idea which was to transform musical notation permanently: that the duration of any note should be determined by its...

 called them coniunctura (Latin for "joined [note]"). When consisting of just three notes (coniunctura ternaria) it is rhythmically identical with the ordinary three-note ligature, but when containing more notes this figure may be rhythmically ambiguous and therefore difficult to interpret (Hiley and Payne 2001). The difficulty was compounded in the later half of the 13th century, when the lozenge shape came also to be used for the semibreve. A general rule is that the last note is a longa, the second-last note is a breve, and all the preceding notes taken together occupy the space of a longa. However, the exact internal rhythm of these first notes of the group requires some interpretation according to context (Apel 1961, 240).

It was also possible to change from one mode to another without a break, which was called "admixture" by Anonymous IV, writing around 1280 (Roesner 2001).
Because a ligature cannot be used for more than one syllable of text, the notational patterns can only occur in melismatic

Melisma

Melisma, in music, 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, where each syllable of text is matched to a single note.-History:Music of ancient cultures used...

 passages. Where syllables change frequently or where pitches are to be repeated, ligatures must be broken up into smaller ligatures or even single notes in so-called "syllabic notation", often creating difficulty for the singers, as was reported by Anonymous IV (Apel 1961, 225; Roesner 2001).

An ordo (plural ordines) is a phrase

Phrase (music)

In music and music theory, phrase and phrasing are concepts and practices related to grouping consecutive melodic notes, both in their composition and performance...

 constructed from one or more statements of one modal pattern and ending in a rest. Ordines were described according to the number of repetitions and the position of the concluding rest. "Perfect" ordines ended with the first note of the pattern followed by a rest substituting for the second half of the pattern, and "imperfect" ordines ended in the last note of the pattern followed by a rest equal to the first part. Imperfect ordines are mostly theoretical and rare in practice, where perfect ordines predominate (Hoppin 1978, 223).

Other writers who covered the topic of rhythmic modes include Anonymous IV, who mentions the names of the composers Léonin and Pérotin as well as some of their major works, and Franco of Cologne

Franco of Cologne

Franco of Cologne was a German music theorist and possibly composer. He was one of the most influential theorists of the late Medieval era, and was the first to propose an idea which was to transform musical notation permanently: that the duration of any note should be determined by its...

, writing around 1260, who recognized the limitations of the system and whose name became attached to the idea of representing the duration of a note by particular notational shapes, though in fact the idea had been known and used for some time before Franco (Hughes 1954b, 379–80). Lambertus described nine modes, and Anonymus IV said that, in England, a whole series of irregular modes was in use (Reece 1940, 288).