History 07

NEW GENRES

Parallel to the writing, new types of melody appear. Undoubtedly they were already habitual, as Amaler the liturgist mentions, without granting the importance, the existence of the trope at the beginning of the 9th century. These types will have a quite brief existence. They are the tropes in strict sense, the sequences and the rhythmic offices. The trope inserts in the liturgical preexisting melody new texts sung between the liturgical texts. The sequences are a trope of the hallelujah vocalization, but the great number as well as his most evolved form do of them a separate genre. The two genres are reserved for holidays of happy character. The only trope preserved in liturgy is taken from Benedicamus Domino (it is the so called O filiis Pascua). The sequences repertoire is something richer; the Trent council has accepted that five of them were surviving.

The rhythmic offices are poetical sets composed for the night Office. In general they comprise antiphons and responsories with often own melodies, but that circulate from one to another of these offices. The flirtation wants that the works happen in the order of ecclesiastic modes, but in spite of the theory, the interest of these sets resides especially in the progressive abandonment of the modal formulae to yield the place to the tonality.

The plainchant alteration had another reason: that of which the medieval people was discovering the polyphony. To a melody learned globally, a difficult art was getting over where it was necessary to isolate the notes and to give them a precise counterpoint. The fundamental voices were doubled one or two times. It is understood that this building was fragile and that the vocalization was not resisting. This process by itself made that the rhythms were retarding. There was a second reason: it was impossible to support in balance several voices superposed without an element of measurement. There appeared the tempo that imposed a more or less precise rhythm even in the monodic execution of melismas and recitations. The singings are at that time so slow that Spanish people (in his Mozarabic autochthonous singing) experience the need to adorn every note with a mordant. About the year 900, Culver had given an authentic small solmization of this primitive polyphony so called organum. His examples were taken from simple syllabic works: hymns, antiphons... East art was probably instinctive, very ancient, and according to the solmization; it continued to present an art of oral improvisation in which each one followed the main voice, the plainchant, to give his revetment to the the fifth and to the fourth. The polyphony was receiving his consecration though the talent of the singer became demanding and demonstrated in the most complicated works: versicles of the hallelujah, of the responsories and of the sequences...

Little by little there become some fragments taken from famous works that will be lengthened to the infinite to serve as base to new polyphonic forms (tenors). It is understood so that in forward an Office will be considered solemn only if he is sung hereby. They continue copying more and more rich, major, and beautiful manuscripts. His loyalty to the model of the 12th century will be perfect but the spirit has got lost.

The Gregorian Chant, nevertheless, was surviving darkly. Even in the course of a polyphonic mass, the melodic declamations of the Preface, of the Epistle and of the Gospel were coming to remember opportunely that there exists something more than beats and chords. In spite of everything these first elements of modal, monodic and rhythmic music were heard. Besides that, in many too poor churches, there could not be allowed the luxury of a chapel; it was then necessary to remain with Gregorian chant which met many distortions. After the slowest interpretation due to the medieval innovations, there came the Renaissance that revived the taste for the antiquity. The metrics reigned on the poetry and even on Gregorian chant. They were used long, brief and whole notes of the measuring notation to express the own quantity of the Latin language. The 16th century was delighted with this unforeseen art.