Disclaimer: This is not going to be some esoteric musical rant on selected chorale preludes from the North German Organ School in the 17th century. So if you were looking for that, hard cheese. If you happen to be in the 100% of people who don’t care about that last remark, I promise to try to stay on topic and to keep this vaguely relevant to the rest of the newsletter.
I bloody love polyphony. The art of weaving together two or more melodic lines at the same time is all around us, in birdsong and in nature, as well as in music. It’s just sort of always been there, like Center Parcs, or Eamonn Holmes. But the prevailing public perception of polyphony is perplexing; when the man on the street thinks of polyphony, as he does regularly and with enthusiasm (in my mind, at least), he will refer you to a very rare and specific subset of it: Bach’s intricate musical spider-webs, called fugues, which are constructed using a very specific set of musical rules. Listening to one of these fugues is like looking up at an ornate Gothic cathedral in awe and staring down at an Escher painting trying to figure out what the hell is going on, both at the same time.
But our man on the street is neither looking up at the cathedral, nor is he staring down at the Escher painting. He is, more likely, walking past a Tesco Express while browsing his phone, probably looking at some teenager attempting to ingest a scoop of cinnamon without throwing up on TikTok. And so, he is quite rightly minded to ask the question; “But why should polyphony concern me, the man on the street?” The answer lies within a closer examination of what polyphony actually means, and in order to do that, we have to delve into its origins.
The concept of melody on its own has lasted for eons: the first Palaeolithic bone flute has been dated to 40,000 years ago and the anatomy for the modern human voice was in place long before that. It is also likely that music evolved through sexual selection, so the caveman who knew his Lydian dominant from his altered scale would have got all the cave-groupies, whereas the caveman who kept missing that sharp 4th would be faced with another night alone, on a sofa, which was probably a rock, before retiring to bed, which was probably a rock. And there was no Netflix in those days. So it’s obvious that this man’s lineage died out pretty quickly, whereas the caveman with the musical clout prospered.
Afterwards music began to evolve as a communal activity. People would learn songs orally, and would sing them together, in glorious unison. The lyrics were simple, and probably applied to aspects of daily life: “I am going on a hunt,” or “I am going for a shit,” or “I am sad because a bear attacked my grandfather today.” The harmony was simple because people just sang in unison, so there was no harmony. Sometimes the women would sing an octave higher than the men, but that’s about it. This drivel carried on. For years. This website contains an audio clip (under the section of the website called ‘The music’) to the world’s oldest recorded song, written down in ancient Mesopotamia almost 40,000 years after the first known bone flute was made, in c. 1,300 BC. I’m not going to lie, this song is a bit of a ‘swing and a miss,’ and probably wouldn’t have made it onto Now That’s What I Call Music! 1,300BC. In fact, even if the song was recorded by Bryn Terfel and remixed by Basement Jaxx, it still wouldn’t be easy on the ears.
However this criticism is unfair, because the whole culture of music was different way back when. There were no professional songwriters, no professional performers, and no audience. Music was strictly communal and enjoyment was derived from everyone singing along or playing along in a big group; the idea of an ensemble playing or singing to a larger audience (the concert) is a purely modern invention. The most well-known song of the day could easily have been the magnum opus of Gary from the local. Songwriting was unlikely to be his day job; he just happened to get a bit creative after a few Tennents.
And this is what makes the advent of polyphony so weird, because it flies directly in the face of all this tradition. Instead of one melody (monophony), there could be any number of melodies weaving in and out of each other at the same time. Bach famously wrote a six-part fugue for keyboard in the Musical Offering. To celebrate Queen Elizabeth I’s 40th birthday, Tallis wrote a 40-part motet (Spem in Alium). This shouldn’t have been allowed to happen. The bloke who declared one day that he was going to ‘whack one line on top of another one and just see what happens’ should have been exposed for what he was: a socially maladroit blockhead with a God complex, a hoity-toity musical elitist, or better yet, a witch. He should have been burnt at the stake faster than he could say ‘melody-dominated homophony.’
Yet he remained unexecuted and the idea caught on, hence the whole existence of organum, isorhythmic motets, canons, and most importantly, madrigals (told ya this was relevant). Polyphony started off simple, with one melody, accompanied by a drone or pedal point: a single note which sounds continuously throughout a piece. Think of the droning sound behind the melody of a bagpipe, or a long pedal note held by an organist over which more exciting stuff is played. From this founding principle, the best musical minds of the last two millennia developed polyphony into a whole school of thought, which culminated in the Baroque Era and was perfected within the pages of Bach’s The Art of the Fugue.
Unsurprisingly, it takes years of specialised training to become a bagpiper worth his salt or an organist who can play more than the first four bars of the Toccata in D. Even today, the people who know the rules of counterpoint well enough to write a fugue to rival Bach’s are few and far between. And in the midst of all this specialisation, we seem to have lost the interest of Gary from the local, who stares at you in bafflement as you explain to him the concepts of “first-species counterpoint,” “cantus firmus,” and why one must raise the leading tone in some minor modes like Aeolian but God forbid you do it in Phrygian. Gary still hasn’t mastered the distinction between a high note and a shout, but he doesn’t care. He just wants a bit of a singalong with the lads, and won’t bat an eyelid if a 3rd is accidentally doubled along the way.
Arguably, the introduction of polyphony was the spark which ignited the cultural shift in music today and created the clear divisions between ‘composer,’ ‘performer,’ and ‘audience member.’ It is the reason why musicians like Bach, who dedicated their lives to the craft, rose to the top of historical consideration with their complex and spellbinding music, and Gary from the local and his mates were relegated to churning out hackneyed football chants with gauche, un-PC lyrics. Even though polyphony is to be found everywhere in the very best of classical music, whether it be Renaissance motets, Baroque concertos, or giant sprawling serial and atonal works, and is equally ubiquitous in the world of jazz music, it is a ‘dark art.’ We have paid a price for it. It has given us two millennia of extraordinary masterworks, and for it we have sacrificed the key role group music-making played in the daily life of the community.
In spite of this rather gloomy statement there remains a beacon of hope. Georgia (the country, not the state) is home to probably the oldest polyphonic tradition in the Western world. Yet singing retains the same social function there as it did all those centuries ago. During weddings and banquets, the whole community will sing together in glorious polyphony and this long-standing tradition is upheld. Within these songs, the more complex upper lines are reserved for a small group of ‘musicians,’ or those mad enough to devote a significant amount of time to hone the craft, and the lower lines, which are more easily learnable, can hold dozens or even hundreds of amateur singers at a time. Here is a video of the Basiani ensemble performing the most well-known Georgian polyphonic folk song, Chakrulo. It is written in three parts: two highly ornamented solo vocal lines, performed by the singers at the front, and a single-line choral foundation, performed by the singers at the back. So the musicians are satisfied; their need for a challenge has been met and an intricate piece of music has been woven together, and Gary and the man in the street, who both just wanted to do some singing, are satisfied too.
Knowing my readership, I doubt many of you would strongly object to this notion, but it would be wonderful if the Georgian attitude towards communal music-making were to reach the UK and singing were to become a more integral part of our daily lives. After all, what’s not to love about a good singalong?
Michael Chamberlain is a tenor in his second year. He is MadGroup's Secretary this year and an absolute legend.
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