Perotin Sederunt principes

 Day 55

Perotin Sederunt Principes 

Early music consort of London

David Munrow

We go back to day to some of the earliest notated music in the western tradition. Perotin, Leonin, and the Notre Dame School were the starting points int he music history course on the B.Mus syllabus - the these are the first two composers in the western tradition that we know by name - thanks to the lecture notes of a student of music history who has come to be known as Anonymous Four, which were written at least a century after this music was written. These composer of the Notre Dame school were experimenting in writing music in two or more parts - with a slow moving lower part based on plainsong and more free-flowing upper part(s) using rhythmic patterns. Indeed this is the first western music we know which has rhythmic notation.

Perotin's claim to fame is that he wrote two four-part pieces - the first four-part music that has come down to us. The more famous of the two is Viderunt, which is the one which always seems to be used to illustrate his music. I have heard that several times but I hadn't hear the companion piece Sederunt.  Both pieces were written in around 1200.

This is astonishing music. Perotin slows down the chant so much that a single note can last a whole minute. On top of this the three voices weave in and out of each other in a dancing rhythm - in modern notation we would note this largely as alternate crotchets and quavers in 6/8 time, - with frequent clashes of tones and fourths. In many ways it seems very modern and this music has undoubtedly had a big impact on the minimalist school of 20th and 21 century composers.

The music raises so many questions. We know the notes and there is broad consensus on how to interpret the rhythms but we don't know anything else about how this music was performed. How fast did it go? Was it sung as the same volume throughout or was their light and shade? Were the upper parts sung by single voices or groups of voices? How were the long notes in the lowest part sustained? Were instruments used?

Then there are questions of how on earth the performers actually managed the performance. What music did they actually sing from? how did they rehearse? how did they keep together. In modern transcriptions the music is organised in conventional bars but the concept of the bar as a unit of music didn't really exist at the time that this music was written. The manuscripts of Perotin's music we have are copies made after his death and to some extent the rhythmic notation will have been amended to suit the conventions of the time.  

I don't really know enough about music of the period to begin to answer these questions but as a practical musician it intrigues to wonder what the singers of the time made of this completely new sort of music. It must have seen completely strange to them and surely they couldn't simply have been given a copy of the music and sung it there and then correctly first time through.

This performance from David Munrow and the Early music consort of London is now almost 50 years old. I find that quite astonishing because it only seems like yesterday that the LP set of Music in the Gothic Era came out - I had a copy on my shelves for many years. The performance stands up pretty well. It is not quite as austere as some modern performances but neither is it over elaborated by superfluous instrumental additions. Whether the music sounded like this in Paris in 1200 we will never know, but on its own terms this is a very satisfying performance.

I was lucky enough when I was a school to see David Munrow and the Early music consort give a lecture recital in Norwich in, I think, 1972. He was an infectious enthusiast for all things musical, not only live but in his wonderful radio programme for young people Pied Piper. His death at only 33 was not only a personal tragedy but a huge loss to music in this country. Imagine what his career would have been like had he lived to a ripe old age.