Clause (chorale)
In the Middle Ages , a clause (also clausula ) was a polyphonic section of a chant . Clause compositions can be found in manuscripts from the 13th century.
Originally the chorals were sung monophonically, but with the beginning of vocal polyphony in the middle of the 12th century , this inviolability of the chant changed. Léonin wrote the Magnus liber organi de graduali et antiphonario pro servitio divino , the Great Book of the Organa , which initially only contained two-part Organa. The period from 1160 to 1250 is also known as the Notre-Dame School , as it coincided with the construction of the Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral .
Later Pérotin added his clausulae , the clauses . These were excerpts from melismatic chorales in which the most important passages had been given a second part, the so-called organum duplum ; a small number of clauses even had three parts . A basic distinction must be made between the so-called sustaining tone factor , in which the second voice sustains a long tone, and the discant factor , in which both voices sing equal melodies. Clauses are usually written in the Discantus sentence, which means that all voices have a comparable number of tones.
The text of the clauses is that of the chorale section of which the lower part consists. This is typically just one word (e.g. the word domino from the versicle Benedicamus Domino ), usually just a single syllable. However, the genre of the motet later developed from the clauses , as the upper part (s) received a new text. For example, the Johanne clause from the Notre- Dame manuscript F fol. 164v musically identical to the motet Ne sai que je from the Codex Montpellier fol. 235r.
Other considerations of the origin of clauses point to the "de-texting" of motets (thesis by Wolf Frobenius). A dissertation on this by Klaus Hoffmann (Tübinger Contributions to Musicology 1972, p. 122). A long-term working group (1988–1995) under Fred Büttner also provided confirmatory results.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Facsimile edition of the manuscript F: Firenze, Biblioteca Mediceo-Laurenziana, Pluteo 29, I, facsimile edition of the manuscript, ed. by Luther Dittmer, New York 1966–1967, 2 volumes. Facsimile edition of the Codex Montpellier: Polyphonies du XIIIe siecle. Le manuscrit H196 de la Faculté de Médecine de Montpellier. Vol. 1: Reproduction phototypique du manuscrit, ed. by Yvonne Rokseth, Paris 1935.
- ↑ Frobenius W. On the genetic relationship between Notre Dame clauses and their motets // Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 44 (1987), pp. 1–39.
- ↑ Franz Körndle, "From the clause to the motet and back?", In: "Musiktheorie", 25th year, issue 2, 2010