11

Do we know what is the earliest known piece of polyphonic music?

I know that there are some 12-th century composers like Léonin and Pérotin that did this kind of thing, but did they compose the earliest known piece of polyphonic music?

Michael Scott Asato Cuthbert
  • 2,054
  • 17
  • 31
Shevliaskovic
  • 30,929
  • 20
  • 117
  • 224

1 Answers1

10

Léonin and Pérotin were two of the most well-known and advanced composers of early polyphonic music, but they certainly were not the first. It's difficult to say when polyphonic music first emerged because it's origin predates standardized music notation, but its origins are at least a few hundred years before Léonin and Pérotin.

A piece was actually just recently discovered from around the year 900, and is now believed to be the oldest known example of a notated piece of polyphonic music. The piece was discovered in London by a student from St. John's College, Cambridge. The link below provides more information as well as a video of the piece being sung:

http://phys.org/news/2014-12-earliest-piece-polyphonic-music.html

That said, there are treatises from around the same time (see Musica enchiriadis, Scolica enchiriadis) that indicate that by around the year 900, multiple people were already experimenting with polyphonic music, so it's likely that there are other polyphonic manuscripts from around the same time waiting to be discovered.

Brian Chandler
  • 2,265
  • 15
  • 14
Casey Rule
  • 2,285
  • 16
  • 34
  • 1
    Great answer! The lack of precise pitch notation except in the enchiriadis treatises limits the number of performable polyphonic pieces that I would expect to find. Between these pieces there are some other important repertories; google Winchester Troper or Aquitanian Polyphony. We are also talking about polyphony in the Western (European) style; heterophony probably predates any of these in many traditions. – Michael Scott Asato Cuthbert Dec 22 '14 at 04:09