ABSTRACT
The first eight fascicles of Trent, Archivio Capitolare, MS 93, contain a lengthy grouping of polyphonic settings of introits, mostly for three voices. When viewed in a wider perspective, the introit genre, while reasonably formulaic in its plainchant performance, presents a surprising number of possible performance variations in its polyphonic guise, thus defying standardized definition. The general structure of a polyphonic introit, with its upper voice elaborating on plainchant, lends itself well to the fauxbourdon style. More inconsistency exists in the location of plainchant within the polyphonic introit's structure. The Tr93 introits almost always open each of their formal divisions with a plainchant intonation. The notational convention in the manuscript is to copy the chant in black notes, reserving white notation for the polyphony. There is nothing particularly unusual about the practice of singing chant intonations for polyphonic introits.
