01	Viderunt omnes						11:36
	02	Veni creator spiritus						07:31
	03	Alleluia posui adiutorium						07:35
	04	O Maria virginei						04:49
	05	Dum sigillum						07:40
	06	Isaias cecinit						01:44
	07	Alleluia nativitas						08:31
	08	Beata viscera						06:14
	09	Siderunt principes						11:54

David James countertenor
John Potter tenor
Rogers Covey-Crump tenor
Mark Padmore tenor
Charles Daniels tenor
Gordon Jones baritone
Paul Hillier baritone, director


Recorded September 1988
ECM New Series 1385



Perotin
Country France
Birth 11?? in France [?]
Death 12?? in France [?]
Period Medieval

Biography
At the end of the twelfth century, as the walls of the Cathedral of Notre Dame were slowly raised above the surrounding buildings of Paris, a school of composers associated with this Cathedral were in the process of fashioning a new type of musical structure to elevate the divine liturgy performed there. Surviving musical manuscripts from a number of European centers (Santiago de Compostella, St. Martial in Limoges, Winchester Cathedral) from the eleventh and twelfth centuries preserve early experiments in liturgical polyphony, adding to the prescribed plainchant sung in worship an extra ornamental voice for a more glorious service upon major feast days. But the center of Paris, home of an increasingly vigorous bourgeois class, and a renowned University, would host the revolutionary new music known as Notre Dame Organum.
Unfortunately, almost nothing is known of the two major composers of this school, Leonin and Perotin. The barest of outlines survives in a thirteenth century document containing the notes of an anonymous English university student. He records that a Magister Leoninus, a great composer, produced an entire Magnus liber organi (Great Book of Organum) for use in celebrations of the liturgy; scholars believe this compilation took place between 1160 and 1180. The student (known as Anonymous IV) goes on to note that Magister Perotinus, an even better composer of "discant," revised the work of the earlier Master, adding to it many pieces of his own; presumably, this took place either in the 1180s and '90s, or early in the following century. From the account of Anonymous IV, and from other contemporary historical records, specific music in surviving manuscripts is attributed to Perotin the Great. For instance, an 1198 liturgical ordinance by the Bishop of Paris relating New Years' eve observances prohibits a popular ritual known as the Feast of Fools, and stipulates instead of these vulgar revels a solemn service including specific pieces of chant set in Organum.

Possibly these exact pieces by Perotin -- Viderunt omnes and Sederunt principes, for the liturgy of Christmas and St. Stephen (Dec. 26), respectively -- represent the earliest music surviving in Europe set for four voices. A fragment of Gregorian chant, usually sung by a soloist, is in this style of Organum presented in a single voice, with very extended rhythmic values. Upon this tonal foundation Perotin erects an interlocking series of upper voices, which vocalize melismatically upon the extended chant syllables. These upper voices adopt vigorous and sequential dance-rhythms made possible by a new theory of notation known as the rhythmic modes. In a complete performance, sections called Clausulae of this highly ornamented polyphony would alternate with passages of unison plainchant, and with shorter chordal sections in "discant" style. In this second style, also used to set Latin liturgical poetry, the voices move jointly according to the rhythmic patterns. Perotin may have written or revised in excess of 150 discant-style liturgical pieces, most for two voices. -- Timothy Dickey



Viderunt omnes, organum for 4 voices
Composer Perotin
Genre Early Polyphony
Composition Date ca. 1200
Description
The human eye beholding the interior of a Gothic Cathedral perceives a deep harmony between a bewildering complexity of elements. Horizontal bands of architecture proceed upwards, each with its own internal rhythms: the ponderous steps of the great columns marching down the aisle, surmounted by a tripling of speed in the smaller rank of triforium gallery arches, in turn crowned by the radiance of the clerestory windows and often yet another celestial rank in the upper rose windows. Each builds upon its foundation in an architectural style which appears literally to strive upwards towards the transcendent Godhead. In much the same way, the music of the Notre Dame School of polyphony harmonizes a complex musical architecture to strive towards perfection in the act of divine worship.
Very little is known about the two leading composers of the Notre Dame School. An unnamed English student at the University of Paris (known to posterity only as Anonymous IV) wrote long after their deaths of the great masters Leoninus (Leonin) and Perotinus Magnus (Perotin). Leonin apparently composed an entire book around the middle of the twelfth century, the Magnus Liber Organi, of polyphonic elaborations upon the Parisian liturgy, to which Perotin later made revisions and additions. Two pieces of Perotin's music which Anonymous IV specifically mentions are Viderunt omnes and Sederunt, which may be identified in manuscript collections of Notre Dame polyphony as the first compositions for four voices anywhere in Europe. The foundation of Viderunt omnes is a plainchant which likely served the Parisian liturgy for Christmas Day. The text comes from verses of Psalm 98 in the Vulgate's Latin (Ps. 98:3b-4a, 2), jubilantly singing of the moment when God's salvation is made known to all the earth. (Incidentally, the text naturally seems to call for such a concord of many voices!) Following the responsory form of plainchant, Viderunt omnes consists of a solo incipit, a chanted conclusion, a short verset (also perhaps for solo), and a repeat of the opening section. Perotin's setting preserves the form, and retains the liturgically correct chant melody, but embellishes it by two "discant clausulae:" sections of composed polyphony which substitute for the solo chants. For each clausula, the choir sings the notes of the chant melody, but each note is greatly extended. Above this abstracted chant is woven a web of three solo voices dancing about one another in long metrical melismas on the chant syllables. The most astounding innovation of Notre Dame polyphony was the addition of rhythm to such ornamental voices: the upper voices sing dozens of notes above each step of the chant, regulated by the six modal rhythms. The rhythmic patterns possible (which may shift in each voice phrase to phrase) are each related to a poetic foot: long/short (trochaic); short/long (iambic); long/short/short (dactylic); short/short/long (anapestic); long/long (spondeic); short/short (pyrrhic). Within the limitations of these rhythms, the voices move freely as if by elaborate improvisation. Often sequential melodic motifs are expounded, and in this piece Perotin even uses canonic relationships between voices. But the power of the piece doesn't come from this intricacy, but rather from the deep sense of harmony. Each phrase begins with a "perfect" harmony of fifths and octaves; the music then progresses in a compelling filigree upon the chant tone, a lengthy marginal gloss. But each phrase returns irrevocably from dissonance to perfection of harmony. And the final moments of the music are given to the liturgically perfect plainchant alone, in unison singing as if to represent the unity of the Church itself. -- Timothy Dickey




Composer Perotin
Genre Early Polyphony
Composition Date ca. 1200

Description
Magister Perotinus (popularly known as Perotin) is primarily known from a short summary of his work written by a fourteenth-century English scribe identified as "Anonymous 4." Anonymous 4 tells us that Perotin "redacted" a number of clausulae from the eleventh century Magnus Liber compiled by Magister Leoninus for Notre Dame Cathedral, and "improved" the discants. Seven works of Perotin are mentioned by name by Anonymous 4, all of which have been identified as belonging to the manuscripts of the Magnus Liber. Scholars of medieval music have identified another 15 pieces likely to have emanated from Perotin or his "school." Up to 154 pieces within the Magnus Liber show signs of being edited in the manner Anonymous 4 attributes to Perotin, but clearly Perotin himself, whoever he really was, was not responsible for all of it. Of the seven verified Perotin works, the best known and most elaborate are the four-voice organa Viderunt Omnes and Sederunt principes. The texts for both are attributed to Phillip the Chancellor, and in typically leonine style, the discant parts are sung over a drone derived from a radically slowed-down chant melody. Whereas Leonin was limited to two voices, in these organa Perotin adds third and fourth voices in roughly the same register, singing short sequences of notes in rhythms that both diverge from and complement one another. The result is a vocal "symphony" that is perceived as a single mass of texture derived from several component parts. Harmonically and rhythmically, Perotin's approach is quite complex, and he makes liberal use of dissonance between the triplum and quadruplum parts to provide color and to keep the music moving forward. Apart from the conductus Congaudeant catholici of Albertus Parisiensis, Perotin's work is the earliest polyphonic music scored for more than two voices extant in the Western world. In addition to the four-voice works, Anonymous 4 also cites the three-voice Alleluia Nativitas (for the Christmas cycle) and Alleluia Posui adiutorium as belonging to the work of Perotin. Anonymous 4 also claims three conductus for Perotin: Salvatoris hodie, Dum sigillum summi Patris (each in two voices), and Beata viscera (a monophonic piece). Since Perotin composed conductus, it would stand to reason that he also worked in the nascent form of the motet. Outside of anonymous adaptations of his three- and four-voice works into motets, nothing by Perotin in this genre has yet been verified. -- David Lewis