Then comes a list of Perotin’s original works, beginning with the real newsmakers, the quadrupla,
organa in four parts (that is, three parts added to the Gregorian tenor). Two titles are given: Viderunt and
Sederunt. Both, it turns out, are graduals: Viderunt omnes fines terrae (“All the ends of the earth have
seen”), for Christmas, was reserved at Notre Dame for the newly instituted Feast of the Lord’s
Circumcision (January 1); Sederunt principes et adversum me loquebantur (“Princes sat and plotted
against me”) was the gradual for the Feast of St. Stephen the Martyr (December 26).
Next some famous organa tripla by Perotin are listed, including an Alleluia for the Mass
commemorating the birth of the Virgin Mary. Finally, Perotin is credited with continuing the already
venerable tradition of composing music to new Latin religious lyrics in the form of conductus, both
polyphonic and monophonic. Three titles are mentioned, of which one—Beata viscera (“O blessed
womb”) in honor of the Virgin—was set to a poem by Philip the Chancellor (of Notre Dame), head of the
University of Paris from 1218 to his death in 1236.
The link between Philip and the work attributed to Perotin is choice evidence for the close creative
relationship that obtained between the cathedral clergy and the university faculty. Philip’s death,
moreover, marks what is known as the terminus ante quem, the latest possible date (literally, “the end
point before which” something happens) for Perotin’s compositional activity. (It also marks the virtual
end of the Latin versus tradition, for Philip was one of the last of that line.)
There is no telling, of course, exactly how Perotin’s lifetime overlapped with Philip’s, and good
reason to believe that he did most of his work considerably before 1236. For there is another category of
historical document that can be linked with him—or rather, with the works attributed to him in Anonymus
IV. In 1198 and again in 1199, the Bishop of Paris, Eudes (or Odo) de Sully, issued letters cautioning
against excessively boisterous holiday celebrations in the cathedral.^2 Keep the bell-ringing down, they
instruct; keep the mummers and maskers out of the sanctuary; no fools’ processions, please. Instead, let
there be good music, and let it be lavish.
In both letters, the bishop promises payment for organum quadruplum: in 1198 he requests it for the
Feast of the Circumcision; in 1199, for the Feast of St. Stephen. Comparison with the list of Perotin’s
works in Anonymus IV shows a remarkable correspondence; for these feasts are precisely the ones at
which the two quadrupla enumerated there would have been sung. So again we have a probable terminus
ante quem: the largest of the works attributed to Perotin must have been composed by—or, most likely,
just at—the end of the twelfth century. One or both of the famous quadrupla, moreover, can be found in
every one of the four big “Notre Dame” manuscripts mentioned above, as well as other manuscripts of the
time or shortly after. And that observation holds as well for every other piece named in Anonymus IV. On
the basis of that list, Perotin’s “complete works” have been collected and published.
So we appear to have a remarkable convergence of prose description, archival document, and actual
musical source, each corroborating the content of the others. It is owing to Anonymus IV and the bishop’s
letters that we can identify the four manuscripts as containing a repertory specifically and officially
associated with Notre Dame. And the musical sources corroborate the specifics of the documentary
accounts.
The only uncorroborated information, frustratingly enough, is the identity (or indeed, the existence) of
the musicians named in Anonymus IV. Three are named in all: besides Leonin and Perotin, there is one
Robert de Sabilone, who is lavishly praised but otherwise unidentified and whose name is found nowhere
else. But neither is the name of Perotin! About the greatest musician of his time, as the author of
Anonymus IV emphatically insists he was, we have no evidence at all except a chance mention in a set of
lecture notes taken down by a nameless Englishman at least fifty and possibly as many as seventy years
after Perotin’s death. (There did happen to be a cantor at Notre Dame named Petrus, who was born Pierre
Hosdenc near Beauvais and served at the Paris cathedral from 1184 to 1197; needless to say, strenuous