Pérotin (fl. c. 1200) was a European composer, believed to be French, who lived around the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth century. He was the most famous member of the Notre Dame school of polyphony. He was one of very few composers of his day whose name has been preserved, and can be reliably attached to individual compositions; this is due to the testimony of an anonymous English student at Notre Dame known as Anonymous IV, who wrote about him.
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Pérotin (fl. c. 1200) was a European composer, believed to be French, who lived around the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth century. He was the most famous member of the Notre Dame school of polyphony. He was one of very few composers of his day whose name has been preserved, and can be reliably attached to individual compositions; this is due to the testimony of an anonymous English student at Notre Dame known as Anonymous IV, who wrote about him. Anonymous IV called him "Perotin Magister", which means Pérotin the master or expert. The name Pérotin is itself derived from "Perotinus," the Latin diminutive of Petrus, the Latin version of the French name Pierre (just as Léonin comes from "Leoninus," the Latin diminutive of Léo). Musical forms and style Pérotin composed organum, the earliest type of polyphonic music; previous European music, such as Gregorian and other types of chant, had been monophonic. He pioneered the styles of organum triplum and organum quadruplum (three- and four-part polyphony); in fact his Sederunt principes and Viderunt omnes are among only a few organum quadrupla known. A prominent feature of his compositional style was to take a simple, well-known melody and stretch it out in time, so each syllable was hundreds of seconds long, and then use each of those held notes (the tenor, Latin for "holder", or cantus firmus) as the basis for rhythmically complex, interweaving lines above it. The result was that one or more vocal parts sang free, quickly moving lines ("discants") over the chant below, which was extended to become a slowly shifting drone. Works Works attributed to Pérotin include the four-voice Viderunt omnes and Sederunt principes; the three-voice Alleluia, Posui adiutorium, Alleluia, Nativitas, and nine others attributed to him by contemporary scholars on stylistic grounds, all in the organum style; the two-voice Dum sigillum summi Patris, and the monophonic Beata viscera in the conductus style. (The conductus sets a rhymed Latin poem called a sequence to a repeated melody, much like a contemporary hymn.) Pérotin's works are preserved in the Magnus Liber, the "Great Book" of early polyphonic church music, which was in the collection of the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. The Magnus Liber also contains the works of his slightly earlier contemporary Léonin. However, attempts by scholars to place Pérotin at Notre Dame have been inconclusive, all evidence being circumstantial, and very little is known of his life. His dates of activity can be approximately established from some late 12th century edicts of the Bishop of Paris, Odo of Sully, which mention organum triplum and organum quadruplum, and his known collaboration with poet Philip the Chancellor, whose Beata viscera he could not have set before about 1220. The bishop's edicts are quite specific, and suggest that Pérotin's organum quadruplum Viderunt omnes was written for Christmas 1198, and his other organum quadruplum Sederunt Principes was composed for St. Stephen's Day (December 26), 1199, for the dedication of a new wing of the Notre Dame Cathedral. His music, as well as that of Léonin and their anonymous contemporaries, have been grouped together as the School of Notre Dame. Contemporary critiques With polyphony, musicians were able to achieve musical feats perceived by many as beautiful, and by others, distasteful. John of Salisbury (1120 – 1180) taught at the University of Paris during the years of Léonin and Pérotin. He attended many concerts at the Notre Dame Choir School. In De nugis curialiam he offers a first-hand description of what was happening to music in the high Middle Ages. This philosopher and Bishop of Chartres wrote: "When you hear the soft harmonies of the various singers, some taking high and others low parts, some singing in advance, some following in the rear, others with pauses and interludes, you would think yourself listening to a concert of sirens rather than men, and wonder at the powers of voices … whatever is most tuneful among birds, could not equal. Such is the facility of running up and down the scale; so wonderful the shortening or multiplying of notes, the repetition of the phrases, or their emphatic utterance: the treble and shrill notes are so mingled with tenor and bass, that the ears lost their power of judging. When this goes to excess it is more fitted to excite lust than devotion; but if it is kept in the limits of moderation, it drives away care from the soul and the solicitudes of life, confers joy and peace and exultation in God, and transports the soul to the society of angels..." (Hayburn 18). Influence Pérotin's music has influenced modern minimalist composers such as Steve Reich, particularly in Reich's work Proverb.[1]
