FIG. 5-2 Melismatic organum on the versus Jubilemus, exultemus from one of the twelfth-century “St. Martial” manuscripts
(Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Fonds Latins MS 1139, fol. 41).
“St. Martial” polyphony is found in four bound volumes comprising nine separate manuscripts,
compiled between ca. 1100 and ca. 1150. (The quotes here are a reminder that the music was kept and
used at St. Martial but not necessarily composed there.) The notation, like that of the contemporary chant,
is specific as to pitch but not as to rhythm, reminding us once again that the music was composed, learned,
and performed by oral methods. We, who must read these texts in order to sing the music the twelfth-
century monks knew by heart, are more seriously handicapped by their rhythmic indeterminacy than we
are in the case of chant, and for a fairly obvious reason. When two parts are sung simultaneously, the
singers have to know how they “line up.” In particular, the singer of the holding part has to know when to
change to the next note—or else the singer of the moving part has to know when to cue his colleague on
the tenor.
All we have to go on today in guessing at what contemporary singers knew cold is the rough—the
very rough—vertical alignment of the parts in the manuscript “score,” and the rule (already implied as far
back as Musica enchiriadis) that the sustained part can move only when its motion will create a
consonance against the faster-moving part. Applying these rules is not enough to arrive at a definitive text,
assuming there was such a thing (which is a great deal to assume). Nor do we know if it is the tenor’s
notes that are meant to be “equipollent” (that is, roughly equal in length, like spoken syllables), or those of
the melismatic part, or neither.
Thus the notation in Fig. 5-2 is (by the standards today’s literate musicians are taught to demand)
vague and insufficient for performance. The transcription of the beginning of the piece in Ex. 5-6 is
entirely speculative. The transcriber, Carl Parrish, sums up the problem:
The number of notes in the upper part to those in the lower varies considerably—from one to fifteen, actually—so that an
effort to keep the lower part [i.e., the original chant] uniform in pace would cause a great variety of speeds in the upper
note groups. On the other hand, a uniform pace in the upper part would cause as much variety in the notes of the slower-
moving tenor.^5Citing mutually exclusive solutions favored by equally respected specialists, Parrish comments that “both
interpretations produce satisfactory musical results, although there is no way of knowing which, if either,
corresponds to the manner originally intended.” In addition to the one to which Parrish called attention,