EX. 2-6 Polyphonic example from Musica enchiriadis (Fig. 2-2b) transcribedThis is not a polyphonic “composition.” Rather, it is an example of how Frankish cantors harmonized
the chants they sang “by ear.” How did that style of harmony get into their ears? The answer to that
question is lost among the unnotated musical repertories that existed alongside the privileged repertory of
notated Roman and Frankish chant. Literate musicians have always been much affected by the music in
their aural environment, and the performance of all music, whether written down or not, is governed in
part by unwritten conventions. (Otherwise, one could learn to compose or to play the piano simply by
reading books.) We can assume that the monks who recorded our first examples of polyphony were not
inventing it but adapting it from oral (probably secular) practice, and that the early examples were meant
as models for application to other melodies.
Which melodies? More likely the new Frankish repertory of proses, hymns, and suchlike than the
canonical Roman chant. That chant, being largely psalmodic, had (as we have seen) an exceptional
“ethical” tradition demanding unison performance. The other, simpler examples given in Musica
enchiriadis of polyphonic “performance practice” (strictly parallel doubling at the fourth, the fifth, and
the octave) are based, like the one shown in Fig. 2-2, on syllabic Frankish compositions in the new style.
But we do not really know what restrictions or preferences there may have been at this time; and it is
tantalizingly possible that polyphonic singing was not the exception but the rule, at least in certain
monastic communities.
The other remarkable feature of the Rex caeli hymn, both in its complete source and as quoted in