The Motet

The two pieces for Monday are examples of the isorhythmic motet, a specialized type of music that was saved for special occassions. In the isorhythmic motet, there is often a proportional relationship in the length/speed/duration of the individual sections of the work to each other. That is, Section A may be twice as long as Section B (2:1) or one and a half times as long as Section B (3:2) etc. The article by Charles Warren tries to read something into the proportions of the DuFay motet. This was a very controversial argument when it was put forth and was rebutted in two other articles: one by Craig Wright, an expert on Early Music at Yale, and more recently by Marvin Trachtenberg, an architecture professor at NYU, among others. So:
1) What about Warren's article?
2) Consider the motet in light of Notker's insertion of words into a chant.

Medieval Polyphony: Organum

In organum and this early polyphony composers added additional melodies to existing lines of chant - chant sung unbelievably slowly at times. I'd like to ask you to think about two aspects of this process.
1) How should we understand this act of adding an additional line of music to a sacred chant? Just why were these people writing, or improvising, these additional lines?
2) Where is the role of emotion in this music?
Next time, we'll continue discussing the the role of music in the medieval church, some technical aspects of coordination, as well as these and other questions.