What is significant about the Winchester Troper?

The Winchester Troper is a foundational text for the study of Anglo-Saxon musical and liturgical practice and neume notation. The most innovative element of the collection is a series of 174 organa for two voices, representing a musical practice not recorded elsewhere in Europe before the 13th century.

What is a organum harmony?

Organum (/ˈɔːrɡənəm/) is, in general, a plainchant melody with at least one added voice to enhance the harmony, developed in the Middle Ages. In its earliest stages, organum involved two musical voices: a Gregorian chant melody, and the same melody transposed by a consonant interval, usually a perfect fifth or fourth.

What did the upper voice of organum sing?

A notable feature of most forms of organum is that the tenor voice is usually singing very long notes (the chant has been stretched out in time) while the upper voice(s) are singing much faster music, creating a sense of two different tempos happening simultaneously.

Where is the 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.

When was polyphony invented?

It was in 1364, during the pontificate of Pope Urban V, that composer and priest Guillaume de Machaut composed the first polyphonic setting of the mass called La Messe de Notre Dame. This was the first time that the Church officially sanctioned polyphony in sacred music.

What did composers of organum based their pieces on?

Therefore composers of organum based their pieces on preexisting Gregorian chants. While the lower voice sang the fixed melody in extremely long notes, the upper voice or voices sang a freely composed part that moved rapidly above it.

What is the difference between Gregorian chant and organum?

The Gregorian chant began to evolve around 700. From 700 – 900, composers would write a line in parallel motion to the chant at a fixed interval of a fifth or a fourth above the original line. This technique evolved further from 900 – 1200. A Gregorian chant to which additional lines were added is called organum.

What did organum added to Gregorian chants?

Organum was a significant development, as it added a second line of melody to the single notes of the Gregorian chant.

Why is it called organum?

Organum, plural Organa, originally, any musical instrument (later in particular an organ); the term attained its lasting sense, however, during the Middle Ages in reference to a polyphonic (many-voiced) setting, in certain specific styles, of Gregorian chant.

What is the difference between florid and Discant organum?

Florid organum = melismatic organum = organum duplum = organum purum. “Discant organum” refers to the two voices falling into a rhythmic mode — a 6/8 or 9/8 feel — singing more or less at the same rate for a passage.

What is Discant Clausula?

The clausula (Latin for “little close” or “little conclusion”; plural clausulae) was a newly composed section of discant (“note against note”) inserted into a pre-existing setting of organum. They occur as melismatic figures based on a single word or syllable within an organum.