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Cantochão

The oldest song we know, both sacred and profane, consists of a single melody, with a texture of the type we call monophonic. In its first phase, the religious music known as chanting had no accompaniment. It consisted of melodies flowing freely, almost always staying within an octave and developing, preferably gently, through one-tone intervals. The rhythms are irregular, being made of free form, according to the accentuations of the words and the natural rhythm of the Latin language, base of the song's song. Some chants were expressed in an antiphonic way, that is, choirs sang alternately. Others were sung in the style of responsory, which is done with the voices of the choir responding to one or more soloists. Even today, in many churches and abbeys, chanting is used normally.


Modes


Ancient music (more precisely that which goes back to the twelfth century) employed a special system of scales which are called modes. You, for example, can play a piano mode. To do so, simply start a scale by a white note, say the reverse, and go up note by note, by touching only the white keys. If you try to do the same thing starting with another note, you will see that the modes never have the same sequence of tones and semitones. The way in which the melody is written is identified by its end, that is, by the note in which it begins and ends, or by the scope of the melody, given by its highest and lowest notes. Each medieval mode had two forms: one "authentic" (like the dory mode, which goes from back to back) and another "plagal" - which has the same mode and the same end, differing only by the fact that the series Start a fourth below. In this case, the prefix "hipo" is added to the name of the mode (for example, a series that goes from there to there, whose final note is aft, becomes the hypodory mode)

Parallel Organum


The first polyphonic songs (with two or more melodic lines woven together) date back to the 9th century. By this time, the composers set out on a series of experiences, introducing one or more lines of voices with the purpose of adding greater beauty and refinement to their music. The composition in this style is called organum and its earliest form is the "parallel organum", since the organo vox (vox organalis, to which it was added) had only the role of doubling the main voice (vox principalis, which retained the chanting Original) in a lower range, fourth or fifth.   This sound, somewhat rigid and stripped, was often enriched by doubling one or both voices in the octave.

Free Organum


Over the next two centuries, composers were gradually taking a few steps towards freeing the organ voice from their role as a faithful copy of the lead vocals. By the eleventh century, in addition to the parallel movement, the organ voice also used the opposite movement (raising when the main voice lowered and vice versa), the oblique movement (keeping fixed while the main voice moved) and The direct movement (following the same direction of the main voice, but separated from this not exactly by the same intervals). In the "free organum", the organo voice is already written above the main voice. It is still done in note-to-note style, but note that in the play shown below there are three occasions when the organ part has two notes to sing against a single one of the main voice.

Melismatic organ


At the beginning of the twelfth century, this rigorous style of note against note was entirely abandoned, replaced by another in which the main voice is stretched by notes of the corner with long values. The main voice then came to be called tenor (from Latin tenere, that is, to keep). Above the tenor notes, long held, a higher voice moved freely, expressed by notes of lesser value, which were gently developing. A melodious group of notes is sung in a single syllable, the name of magnetism, hence this type of organ is known as "melismatic organum". The tenor of the piece that we transcribe below was taken from the Benedicamus Domino

Organum in Notre-Dame


Later, in the twelfth century, Paris became a very important musical center, since, in 1163, the construction of the cathedral of Notre Dame took place. There, the scores of organum, with a group of composers belonging to the so-called "School of Notre-Dame", reached an admirable stage of elaboration. However, only the names of two such composers came to us: that of Léonin, who was the first master of the choir of the cathedral, and that of his successor, Pérotin, who worked from 1180 until about 1225.

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