Pérotin

Pérotin, also called Perotinus Magnus, “Pérotin the Great”, succeeded Léonin as the leading figure of polyphonic music at Notre-Dame de Paris. As with his predecessor, his biography is almost entirely lost: he is thought to have been born around 1160 and to have died around 1230, his activity centring on the year 1200. Some scholars have linked him to a certain Petrus, cantor or succentor of the cathedral at that time, but the identification remains uncertain.

What we know of him again comes from the English theorist known as “Anonymous IV”. He relates that Pérotin, “the best discantor”, revised Léonin’s Magnus liber organi, shortening some pieces and composing many more rhythmic clausulae. Above all he names several specific works, which allow a few to be recognised with reasonable confidence: the four-voice organa Viderunt omnes and Sederunt principes, the three-voice Alleluia Nativitas and several conductus.

Pérotin’s great innovation was writing in three and four voices. Above a Gregorian tenor stretched into immense notes, he layered two or three voices moving in regular rhythms, answering one another, exchanging motifs and forming chords of very full sonority. The effect is almost hypnotic: blocks of sound that seem to revolve on themselves, punctuated by powerful cadences.

Two decrees by Bishop Eudes de Sully, dated 1198 and 1199, provide for organum in three or four voices to be sung at the feasts of Christmas, the Circumcision and St Stephen. Scholars often see a link with Pérotin’s two great works, Viderunt omnes for Christmas and Sederunt principes for St Stephen’s Day, which would thus have been sung in the choir of the cathedral while it was still being built.

Pérotin also wrote conductus, Latin songs on new poems for one or more voices, such as Beata viscera on a text by Philip the Chancellor. His clausulae, detached from the great organa, soon received new words in their upper voices: this is how the motet was born, the most important genre of the following centuries.

Pérotin’s organa demanded singers of great virtuosity. The upper voices, often in the same range, constantly cross and practise voice exchange: a phrase sung by one is immediately taken up by another, like a play of mirrors. The cadences, where all voices meet on consonances of fifths and octaves, act as pillars for these vast structures, comparable to the columns that punctuate a Gothic nave. The composer also organised time carefully: some sections are built on precise proportions, evidence of a very conscious sense of form. These pieces, which could last more than a quarter of an hour, circulated throughout Europe; copies are found in Spanish and English manuscripts, and thirteenth-century theorists cite them as models of the art of discant.

Rediscovered in the twentieth century, Pérotin fascinated modern composers, particularly minimalists such as Steve Reich, who were drawn to his repetitions and long pulses. He remains the symbol of the golden age of the Notre-Dame school and of a moment when Paris, alongside Gothic architecture, invented a music on the scale of its cathedrals.