11.3.

2015

Chancediscoverycastsnewlightonoriginsofpolyphonicmusic|Music|TheGuardian

Chance discovery casts new light on origins

of polyphonic music
PhD student happens upon fragment in British Library suggesting modern multi-part music
evolved earlier than was thought
Maev Kennedy
Wednesday 17 December 2014 00.01 GMT

A few lines of music written down 1,100 years ago, spotted by chance by a postgraduate
student in a manuscript in the British Library, have proved to be the earliest example of
polyphonic choral music, where the voices sing dierent melodies combining to make
one composition.
The scrap of music, which would have lasted no more than a few seconds, was written
on the bottom of a page of a portrait of a saint and has been dated to around AD900.
Although there are very early treatises on such music, the discovery is the earliest
practical example intended for use by singers the next oldest known is from a
collection known as the Winchester Troper, originally made for Winchester cathedral
and dated to around 1000.
The short composition in praise of Saint Boniface was spotted by chance by Giovanni
Varelli, a PhD student from St Johns College, Cambridge, while he was an intern at the
British Library. Varelli, who specialises in early music notation, spotted that the piece
was written for two voices. He believes its signicance was missed by other scholars
because the notation, which pre-dates the invention of the stave, is hard to read for nonspecialists.
He said the unknown composer was already experimenting with the style, breaking the
rules as they then stood. Whats interesting here is that we are looking at the birth of
polyphonic music and we are not seeing what we expected. Typically, polyphonic music
is seen as having developed from a set of xed rules and almost mechanical practice.
This changes how we understand that development precisely because whoever wrote it
was breaking those rules. It shows that music at this time was in a state of ux and
development. The conventions were less rules to be followed than a starting point from
which one might explore new compositional paths.
Although the composer and the origin of the manuscript are unknown, Varelli,who has
put extensive detective work into his discovery, believes the style of notation, known as
Eastern Palaeofrankish, suggests it came from a monastery in the region of Dsseldorf or
Paderborn in modern north-west Germany.
The piece was written on the blank space at the bottom of a page of the life of Bishop
Maternianus of Reims. Another scribe has added a Latin inscription at the top of the page
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/dec/17/polyphonicmusicfragmentoriginsrewritten

1/2

11.3.2015

Chancediscoverycastsnewlightonoriginsofpolyphonicmusic|Music|TheGuardian

that translates as which is celebrated on December 1. Varelli said the date helped
narrow his search for the origin of the manuscript, because although most monastic
houses celebrated the saints day on April 30, a handful in Germany marked it on
December 1 instead.
The style would be rened and developed for many centuries, becoming far more
elaborate than a simple chant for two monks.
The rules being applied here laid the foundations for those that developed and
governed the majority of western music history for the next thousand years. This
discovery shows how they were evolving, and how they existed in a constant state of
transformation, around the year 900.
More news

Topics
British Library

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/dec/17/polyphonicmusicfragmentoriginsrewritten

2/2