“When I tried to work out the melody I realised that the music written above was the same as the one outlined by the notation used for the chant and that this sort of 'diagram' was therefore a two-voice piece based on the antiphon for St Boniface”, Varelli said. The fact that it was an early example of music for two parts had probably gone unnoticed because the author used a very early form of musical notation for the polyphonic piece, which would have been indecipherable to most modern readers. The piece is technically known as an “organum”, an early type of polyphonic music based on plainsong, in which an accompaniment was sung above or below the melody. It shows that music at this time was in a state of flux and development, the conventions were less rules to be followed, than a starting point from which one might explore new compositional paths.” This changes how we understand that development precisely because whoever wrote it was breaking those rules. “Typically, polyphonic music is seen as having developed from a set of fixed rules and almost mechanical practice. “What’s interesting here is that we are looking at the birth of polyphonic music and we are not seeing what we expected,” Varelli said. This suggests that even at this embryonic stage, composers were experimenting with form and breaking the rules of polyphony almost at the same time as they were being written. Varelli’s research suggests that the author of the newly-found piece – a short “antiphon” with a second voice providing a vocal accompaniment – was writing around the year 900.Īs well as its age, the piece is also significant because it deviates from the convention laid out in treatises at the time. Treatises which lay out the theoretical basis for music with two independent vocal parts survive from the early Middle Ages, but until now the earliest known examples of a practical piece written specifically for more than one voice came from a collection known as The Winchester Troper, which dates back to the year 1000. Polyphony defined most European music up until the 20th century, but it is not clear exactly when it emerged. Varelli specialises in early musical notation, and realised that it consisted of two vocal parts, each complementing the other. He discovered the manuscript by chance, and was struck by the unusual form of the notation. The piece was discovered by Giovanni Varelli, a PhD student from St John’s College, University of Cambridge, while he was working on an internship at the British Library. Written using an early form of notation that predates the invention of the stave, it was inked into the space at the end of a manuscript of the Life of Bishop Maternianus of Reims. It is the earliest practical example of a piece of polyphonic music – the term given to music that combines more than one independent melody – ever discovered. The inscription is believed to date back to the start of the 10th century and is the setting of a short chant dedicated to Boniface, patron Saint of Germany. The earliest known practical example of polyphonic music - a piece of choral music written for more than one part - has been found in a British Library manuscript in London.
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