Organistae and the Cultivation of Polyphony at Notre-Dame de Paris, c. 1190–1273.

From the second half of the twelfth century until the late thirteenth century, the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris was the setting of a transformative episode in the history of music. On dozens of feast days in the cathedral's liturgical year, the chants of the Mass and Office were sung in elaborate polyphony [ organum ]. The story of "Notre-Dame" polyphony is familiar, but it has had little to say about the musicians behind this repertory. This article reconstructs a small community of polyphonic masters—known, in Latin, as organistae —that took shape on the Left Bank of Paris between about 1190 and 1260. Scholars have come to imagine these musicians as the cathedral's impoverished choral clerks, but I argue that organistae were supported, until about 1230, by lucrative ecclesiastical benefices; their lordly patrons were the bishops of Paris. Drawing upon newly uncovered archival evidence, I show that these ties to the cathedral began to fray in the 1230s and 1240s. In this period, I suggest, organistae pivoted away from the cathedral, finding new patrons in their own Left Bank neighborhoods. It was not until the 1260s, as they began to enter the ranks of Notre-Dame's choral clergy, that organistae came to resemble the portrait of them that has prevailed in the scholarship. In general, this article argues that the cultivation of polyphony in thirteenth-century Paris was tied to the social world of organistae. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]