The Development of Polyphonic Music up to 1550    

Some time during the ninth century the most important event in the whole of European musical history happened - Church musicians began to sing in chords.  Nature has created women and children with high and low voices, and men with high and low voices about an octave below those of women and children.  A tune that suits the range of a treble voice will fit an alto voice if it is sung a fourth of fifth lower, while tenor and bass voices will find it convenient to sing an octave below the treble and alto.  And so the boys and men in church choirs began to sing in organum, an example of which is quoted on p. 63- Probably they did not realize what a wonderful new thing they were doing, and what far-reaching consequences it was going to have.  But, once having heard parallel fourths, fifths and octaves, the way was open to experiment with other intervals, and with movement that was not ' always parallel. And so, for several hundred years, the monks experimented with musical composition, gradually evolving rules, and also devising a notation in which to write down their music.  It is a fascinating story, but it would take too long to tell here.

This early music was almost entirely vocal, for instruments were still too primitive to be used for serious music.  But sometimes the monks wrote secular music, in addition to music for the church.  For example, a monk from Reading Abbey, called John of Fornsete, wrote 'Sumer is i-cumen in' round about 1240. You may know it, as it is still sung today.

The monks had worked out a system of scales called modes.  Our major mode was one of them, but they liked this the least!  The others can be found by playing a scale on the white notes of the piano, starting on each note in turn.  For example, the mode from D to D is called Dorian, and the mode from A to A Aeolian.  Music based on these modes sounds strange to us today, but they were in use right through the days of Queen Elizabeth 1, and only began to die out with the development of opera in the seventeenth century.  

As a result of the Renaissance and the spread of leaming and education throughout Europe, music began to widen its bounds.  Other people, beside monks, began to compose and perform music; and secular music, mainly intended for the homes of the wealthier classes and the aristocracy, developed rapidly.  Then, too, there was the unwritten folk music sung by the people of every country, which is referred to on p. 92.  By about 1550 the stage is set for us to begin the study of individual composers and of music, which we can understand and enjoy today.