When and where? Ars Antiqua is a term that was first used by 14th-century music theorists. It refers to the polyphonic style, preceding the style of the Ars Nova (= French style of the 14th century). Roughly put, the style of Ars Antiqua is the style of 13th century French polyphony around the composers of the Notre Dame in Paris (also called Notre Dame school). Ars Antiqua Who? Important composers in the Ars Antiqua Leoninus Perotinus Background Leoninus and Perotinus, probably lived and worked in Paris at the Notre Dame Cathedral, are known as the first known name of Western European composers. They are actually anonymous composers of whom, except name and work, nothing is known. Despite the enormous popularity of the Notre Dame repertory (it is found in manuscripts all over Europe), their names were coincidentally reported in an essay of an English student, ironically known as Anonymous IV. Without this manuscript Leoninus and Perotin would have been as anonymous as any other composer of sacred music from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Important music theorists in the Ars Antiqua Johannes de Garlandia (De mensurabili musica, about 1240) defines the rhythmic modes, consisting of a short patterns of long and short note values (corresponding to a metrical foot such as trochee, jambe etc.) Franco of Cologne (aslo called: Franco of Paris or Franco teutonicus), was the first to describe a system of notation in which differently shaped notes have entirely different rhythmic values (in the Ars Cantus Mensurabilis of approximately 1260) What? In the Notre Dame repertory, which originated around 1200 in the cathedral of Paris, the voices have a high degree of mobility and independence achieved. It is one of the highlights of the first polyphonic music in Western Europe. It is still an ornament of Gregorian chant, which remains completely intact (according to legend because it was sacred music which nothing could be changed). The following forms can be found: Organum: a polyphonic composition (two-, three or four-part), based on a gregorian chant; the chant is composed as a slow moving melody (long notes). The other voice(s), orginally improvised, can be homorhythmic (as in the parallel organum) or can contain small note values (florid or melismatic organum) Conductus: homophonic, homorhythmical, non-liturgical composition, based on a new composed melody Motetus (later in the 13th century): a polyphonic, polyrhythmical composition, emerged from the organum by adding different texts, sometimes in different languages, to the different voices. The lowest voice, called the tenor, is normally based on a chant, in latin (sometimes in french). Rota or Rondellus: canon Remarks Structural harmonic intervals are prime, octave, fourth and fifth. Johannes de Grocheo writes in his treatise De Musica (c. 1300) that the motet has always been developed in the environment of church and university (not the court), as a pleasant pastime for intellectuals and professionally trained singers: the spiritual elite of society.