Polyphonie: The Birth Of Polyphony

La naissance de la Polyphonie is a handy collection found in Harmonia Mundi's Century Series as Volume 5; it covers the rise of polyphonic music from its humble origins in eleventh century Aquitanian neumes through fragmentary thirteenth and fourteenth century English sources utilized by Anonymous 4 to construct the English Ladymass of 1991. This is a surprisingly narrow scope, given that manuscripts - at least through the thirteenth century - of polyphonic music are relatively few in this period and are dwarfed by the rich range of contemporary sources extant for monophonic music. This disc progresses from a point two centuries behind the earliest Organum appears in the treatise Musica enchiriadis and ends just short of the advent of Guilluame Machaut; the only motets performed here come from the Montpelier Codex, the oldest and most comprehensive source for the earliest motets.