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Rhythmic mode

In medieval music, the rhythmic modes were set patterns of long and short durations (or rhythms). The value of each note is not determined by the form of the written note (as is the case with more recent European musical notation), but rather by its position within a group of notes written as a single figure called a ligature, and by the position of the ligature relative to other ligatures. Modal notation was developed by the composers of the Notre Dame school from 1170 to 1250, replacing the even and unmeasured rhythm of early polyphony and plainchant with patterns based on the metric feet of classical poetry, and was the first step towards the development of modern mensural notation.[1] The rhythmic modes of Notre Dame Polyphony were the first coherent system of rhythmic notation developed in Western music since antiquity.

Cooper gives the above but doubled in length, thus 1) is quarter note barred in 3
4, for example.[7]

half note

Riemann is another modern exception, who also gives the values twice as long, in 3
4 time, but in addition holds that the third and fourth modes were really intended to represent the modern , with duple rhythms (half note quarter note quarter note and quarter note quarter note half note, respectively).[8]

common time

Though the use of the rhythmic modes is the most characteristic feature of the music of the late Notre Dame school, especially the compositions of Pérotin, they are also predominant in much of the rest of the music of the ars antiqua until about the middle of the 13th century. Composition types which were permeated by the modal rhythm include Notre Dame organum (most famously, the organum triplum and organum quadruplum of Pérotin), conductus, and discant clausulae. Later in the century, the motets by Petrus de Cruce and the many anonymous composers, which were descended from discant clausulae, also used modal rhythm, often with much greater complexity than was found earlier in the century: for example each voice sometimes sang in a different mode, as well as a different language.


In most sources there were six rhythmic modes, as first explained in the anonymous treatise of about 1260, De mensurabili musica (formerly attributed to Johannes de Garlandia, who is now believed merely to have edited it in the late 13th century for Jerome of Moravia, who incorporated it into his own compilation).[2] Each mode consisted of a short pattern of long and short note values ("longa" and "brevis") corresponding to a metrical foot, as follows:[3]


Although this system of six modes was recognized by medieval theorists, in practice only the first three and fifth patterns were commonly used, with the first mode being by far the most frequent.[4] The fourth mode is rarely encountered, an exception being the second clausula of Lux magna in MS Wolfenbüttel 677, fol. 44.[5] The fifth mode normally occurs in groups of three and is used only in the lowest voice (or tenor), whereas the sixth mode is most often found in an upper part.[5]


Modern transcriptions of the six modes usually are as follows:

. 1961. The Notation of Polyphonic Music, 900–1600, fifth edition, revised and with commentary. Publications of the Mediaeval Academy of America, no. 38. Cambridge, Mass.: Mediaeval Academy of America.

Apel, Willi

(1978). Medieval Music. New York City: W. W. Norton & Co. ISBN 0-393-09090-6.

Hoppin, Richard H.

Hughes, Dom Anselm. 1954a. "Music in Fixed Rhythm". In New Oxford History of Music, vol. 2: "Early Medieval Music up to 1300", edited by Dom Anselm Hughes, 311–52. London, New York City, & Toronto: Oxford University Press.

Hughes, Dom Anselm. 1954b. "The Motet and Allied Forms". In New Oxford History of Music, vol. 2: "Early Medieval Music up to 1300", edited by Dom Anselm Hughes, 353–404. London New York City, & Toronto: Oxford University Press.

. 1940. Music in the Middle Ages. New York City: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-09750-1.

Reese, Gustave

; Tyrrell, John, eds. (2001). The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2nd ed.). London: Macmillan. ISBN 9780195170672.

Sadie, Stanley

Seay, Albert. 1975. Music in the Medieval World, second edition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.  0-13-608133-9 (cloth); ISBN 0-13-608125-8 (pbk).

ISBN

Footnotes

Articles. 1980. "Rhythmic Mode", "Johannes de Garlandia", "Franco of Cologne". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by Stanley Sadie. 20 vols. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd.  1-56159-174-2.

ISBN

, J. Peter Burkholder, and Claude V. Palisca. 2006. A History of Western Music, seventh edition. New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-97991-1.

Grout, Donald Jay

. 1984. "The Plica and Liquescence". In Gordon Athol Anderson (1929–1981) in memoriam: Von seinen Studenten, Freunden und Kollegen, 2 vols., 2:379–91. Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen, no. 39. Henryville, PA: Institute of Mediæval Music.

Hiley, David

Parrish, Carl. 1957. The Notation of Medieval Music. London: Faber & Faber.

, and Willi Apel (eds.). 1986. The New Harvard Dictionary of Music. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-61525-5.

Randel, Don Michael

Smith, Norman E. 1988. "The Notation of Fractio Modi". Current Musicology, nos. 45–47 (Fall: Studies in Medieval Music: Festschrift for Ernest H. Sanders, edited by Peter M. Lefferts and Leeman L. Perkins): 283–304.

(ed.). 1957. New Oxford History of Music, vol. 1: "Ancient and Oriental Music". London & New York: Oxford University Press.

Wellesz, Egon