Very little is known about Pérotin. What we do know is informed mostly by the work of “Anonymous IV”, an English student based in Paris in the late 13th century, who wrote at length on the daily life and musical pursuits in a medieval religious community. Pérotin was around in the late 12th century, and was probably choirmaster at Notre Dame cathedral; this is nothing remarkable by our 21st century standards, but you have to bear in mind two important facts. Firstly, the Christian liturgy provided the context for most of the major musical advances in the Middle Ages and secondly, Paris was rapidly becoming one of Europe’s major cultural centres. This enhanced cultural reputation had a lot to do with the groundbreaking music emanating from Notre Dame cathedral, with our man Pérotin as one of the major influences.
Some musical background… the earliest known religious music was plainchant (sometimes, and probably erroneously, known as “Gregorian” chant). One or more people would sing a single melodic line. This is monophonic music. One of the earliest types of polyphonic music (where more than one line is played or sung simultaneously) is known as “organum”… for composers of the Notre Dame school, this involved slowing down an existing chant to drone-like speed and adding another, faster part over the top. As our roving medieval reporter Anonymous IV reports, Léonin, another Notre Dame composer, was a master of organum, compiling “Magnus Liber”, the definitive book of organum at the time.
Some years later, and with the benefit of a decade or several of musical progress, Pérotin set about expanding upon, and updating, “Magnus Liber”. He also pretty much set the standard for polyphonic writing for much of the next century. As you do.
So, wanna hear some Pérotin? With any music for which no contemporary audio recordings exist, you have to rely on the quality and authenticity of the performance (and, with music so early, on the musicological research required to learn the performance parameters of the time). For early choral music, the Hilliard Ensemble are always a pretty safe bet, and their album ‘Perotin’ is one of the finest early music CDs I’ve heard. If you think you might be into any of this pre-Renaissance stuff, buy it now.
To really get an idea of what Pérotin was up to, though, you need to compare his music with what came before. There’s a CD by the Early Music Consort of London called ‘Music of the Gothic Era’ which contains two versions of the same piece, “Viderunt omnes”. The first is by Léonin, written as an organum for 2 voices. It’s a fine piece of writing, with plenty of intriguing melodic ideas and a cute little tinkly bell. Then you come to Pérotin’s revision of the same piece and… BLAMMO! It’s like going from black & white to colour TV or putting on a pair of 3D glasses. Pérotin’s four-voice organum (no tinkly bell for him, oh no) is so lush, you could spoon it out of the speakers. Remember, this is medieval polyphony, so there are no “chords” as such. The multiple parts are moving independently, but they meet to form a variety of consonances and dissonances, some of which leave me gobsmacked every time I hear them.
When I first heard Pérotin’s music last year I was amazed by it. Amazed by its beauty, its richness of texture and, above all, by the fact that someone was coming up with that stuff back in the 1190s. I’m still amazed by it.
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